Return to office (RTO) policies are making their way through the corporate landscape, and employees who have adapted to hybrid work have grown accustomed to the benefits of working from home. With the debates on the tradeoffs of employee work/life balance versus employee engagement and productivity, executives know making a significant change to an organization’s work environment is no easy task.
Employees who have become accustomed to hybrid work are willing to sacrifice to maintain it. Over two-thirds (67%) of more than 1,000 surveyed hybrid workers said they would forfeit part of their salary to maintain their current work settings, according to a poll by flexible workspace provider, IWG.
Data shows the higher the salary, the more the individual is willing to give up in order to maintain a hybrid work environment. Nearly a quarter (24%) of respondents making over $150,000 annually told IWG they would give up over $40,000 of their own salary versus going back to the office full-time.
The highest-paid employees aren’t the only ones that are willing to give up a significant portion of their salaries. Twenty-one percent of those making $100,000 to $149,000 would give up $20,000, and nearly 16% of those making $50,000 to $99,000 would give up $5,000.
IWG reports at least some employees of all ages are willing to give up some pay to maintain working at home, but found millennials (born 1981-1996) and Generation Z (born 1997-2010) make up the majority of these figures.
Twenty-two percent of millennials and Gen Z would be willing to give up 31 to 40% of their salary, while a quarter (25%) of baby boomers would be willing to do the same. Over a fifth (21%) of Generation X would give up 1 to 10% of their salary.
Ten percent of all respondents would give up $30k to work in a hybrid setting, with just over 16% of all respondents would give up $10k to work in a hybrid setting. Zero percent of both baby boomers and Generation X (born 1965-1980) surveyed said they would be willing to give up more than 31% of their salary in order to maintain hybrid work settings.
While the jury is still largely out on whether hybrid work does indeed inhibit growth, productivity as a metric is still a new phenomenon for many executives. From strategies such as using software to track mouse and keypad actions, to taking frequent assessments in moments that matter, executives are still undecided on how exactly to measure productivity in a hybrid work environment.
Despite a lack of precedent to the situation, the National Bureau of Economic Research does have data on how much time employees save when working from home on a given day. Within a 24-hour period, an employee can save 55 minutes in the United States when working from home. According to their data, 42% of Americans put those saved minutes back into their primary or secondary job, 35% spend it on leisure, and 8% spend the extra time caregiving.
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