The Enterprise Reader Survey says: 2021 was a very good year (cue Sinatra): It seems that last year was a good year to do business here — and optimism is the prevailing sentiment as we push ahead with 2022, the results of the Enterprise 2022 Reader Poll show. Despite the emergence of the delta and omicron variants, supply chain disruptions, and surging commodity prices, a whopping three-quarters of all respondents said that 2021 was good for business. This is significantly higher than the 42% who expressed optimism in 2020, when we last posed the question, reflecting the post covid recovery we saw on the macro front last year. Seriously, what a difference two years make.

You are even more optimistic about 2022, with 77% of respondents saying that business conditions will improve this year. Even when looking at those who are not breaking out the bubbly, we see more people unsure of how the year will go (14%) than those who see the year turning sour (9%).

The majority aren’t afraid of the competition: Sixty-nine percent of readers tell us they see their companies doing better than their competition in the next six months. This is up from a little under half (47%) in 1Q2020. Those who think they’ll be doing worse than the competition dropped from our last poll to only 4%, down from 13%.

Most of your companies are even planning on some CAPEX spending in 2022: 63% of you believe it is likely that your business will increase investment in Egypt in the next six months, up from only 25% when the pandemic first started.

Covid who? Having gone through the pains of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021, we appear to have gained some resilience and are less afraid of covid. Eighteen percent of respondents don’t see the pandemic and its new variants as a significant issue to their business, up from 10% back in 2020. A full 10% see covid as an opportunity — up from only 4%. The majority (58%) feel that the pandemic remains a challenge, but that their businesses can overcome it.

Nothing to fear but fear itself: Only 9% of you feel that covid and new variants such as omicron present a clear threat to your business’ future, down from 17% back in 2020.

…And that’s (in part) because you’ve been proactive about jabs: 57% of respondents say that their company plans to institute or has already instituted a mandatory vaccination policy, in line with government efforts to get everyone vaccinated. This is in stark contrast to last year, where a majority of companies we spoke with said they were simply encouraging employees to get the vaccine. That said, a full 30% of respondents say their companies have not or will not make it mandatory to get jabbed.

This attitude is showing results, with 92% of respondents saying that at least some of their staff are either partially or fully vaccinated, and a quarter of respondents telling us that all of their staff members are either partially or fully vaccinated. We tip our hats to those companies and would love to hear their stories on how they got it done.

Is the WFH era over? With the major push for vaccinations, it’s not unsurprising that a full 44% of respondents are not allowed to work from home. Only 14% of respondents are working full-time from home. Meanwhile, 42% are allowed to work between one and four days every week from home, with the majority of those permitting only two days from home. Just to put it into perspective, 82% of readers told us that their companies had allowed them to work from home back in 2020.

Tap / click here for the full survey results, including your views on:

• The biggest issues facing your business today (bureaucracy + retaining top talent)
• Are you hiring this year? (Yes)
• Do you plan to downsize this year? (Nope)
• M&A + FDI + IPO outlook for your industry
• Your views on EGX fee cuts and SPACs