Compliance and regulation are hindering Chief Executive’s performance according to research conducted by the executive search firm, Odgers Berndtson.

Odgers Berndtson interviewed 295 Executive and Non-Executive Directors from FTSE 350 companies examining the main pressures in their roles and the factors that hinder their performance. The key findings are as follows: 52 percent of respondents believe less time spent on compliance and regulation would help CEO’s be more effective; 20 percent cite the importance of the relationship with the chairman in ensuring the CEO performs more effectively; One fifth check their emails as soon as they wake up in the morning and the average time to leave the office is 19:20; 40 percent claim they cannot perform at their best with their current workload for more than a year Quantity of work outstanding is the biggest worry to respondents – 47 percent cite this as the thing which keeps them awake at night

Notably, in contrast to common thinking, only 11 percent of respondents described their role as “lonely” and the majority did not cite quarterly results as a concern of theirs.

Kit Bingham, Partner and chair of the board practice at Odgers Berndtson said: “The survey reveals what we already knew anecdotally to be true, namely that being a business leader is an ‘always on’ role. A combination of information technology and globalisation means there is precious little if any downtime for today’s business leaders. Most instantly turn to their email the moment they wake up, feel under pressure to work at weekends, and nearly one-fifth are worried by what they don’t know is going on in their organisations. No wonder that most feel they can’t sustain the pace for more than a couple of years. Perhaps the key characteristic in any business leader’s armoury is resilience.”