Many employees willing to trade pay cut for opportunity to work from anywhere
A recent survey by FlexJobs founds that 26% of workers would accept a 5% reduction in pay.
Half of employees place such a high value on workplace flexibility that they are willing to accept a pay cut to be able to work from anywhere. A recent survey by FlexJobs founds that 26% of workers would accept a 5% reduction in pay and 24% were fine with a decrease of as much as 20%.
“Return-to-office mandates are largely responsible for the growing divide between employers and their workforces,” said Toni Frana, lead career expert for FlexJobs. “But as we’ve seen, many companies are adopting work-from-anywhere arrangements and creating more opportunities than ever before for workers to find a career that has the location flexibility they want.”
Employees are willing to trade more than just salary in exchange for location flexibility. Survey respondents also are willing to give up opportunities for professional development (23%), vacation days (15%), company-sponsored health insurance (13%) and retirement-focused company contributions (10%).
Millennials showed the greatest willingness to exchange key employment factors for a remote job without location restrictions. Less than one-third of millennials said they wouldn’t give up anything for a work-from-anywhere job, compared to 41% of Gen X and half of boomers.
Three-quarters of respondents said they would “definitely use” a work-from-anywhere policy if provided by their employer. Given the opportunity to work remotely full time and without any location requirements, the majority also said they would consider relocating to a different city (40%) or state (41%). Although 39% said they would not relocate, 28% of respondents said they would consider relocating to a different country entirely.
Additionally, 16% said they would become a digital nomad if they had a work-from-anywhere job. But the majority of those interested in working from anywhere today prefer to perform their job from fewer locations, a shift away from digital nomads of the past who traveled frequently and worked from various locations around the world.
Related: Remote work roles dropped 25% since 2021, employees pushing RTO mandates
The question for employers is whether these arrangements come at the cost of reduced productivity. The answer is no, according to the institute’s Pulse of the Profession 2024 report.
“Research reveals that negative perceptions of work from anywhere are unfounded, both at the project level and more broadly throughout organizations,” it said.
Data suggest that, comparatively, work location has no negative impact on project performance. Furthermore, there is a marginal difference in project performance when considering any combination of ways of working. Data show a slight but not statistically significant edge in project performance rates for in-person work across all management approaches.