A survey by professional network Blind found out that 64% of employees from America’s biggest companies would turn down a $30,000 salary increase to keep working from home.
Before the pandemic, remote workers were a minority. When governments were forced to apply restrictions to prevent the covid-19 spread, companies had to implement a virtual model. For some, working remotely implied making drastic changes in several areas and overall it challenged their rigid structure.
More than a year has gone by since most employees started working remotely and offices are starting to reopen. More than 124 million Americans have been vaccinated and authorities believe returning to the office is now safe. But are employees excited about returning to work?
Salary Increase vs. Working From Home
Is not news that employees embraced working from home. For most of them, the flexibility allowed them to have a better work-life balance. For others remote work allowed them to take care of their children better. There are endless benefits for employees to insist on keeping this new virtual working structure.
However, not all companies are excited about continuing with the remote work model. JPMorgan, WeWork, Google, among others, are looking forward to the employees returning to the office. For most of them, having an office-centric culture enables employees to collaborate better. However, research shows that employees don’t want to give the flexibility benefits so easily and would even decline a salary increase just to keep working remotely.
Kyum Kim, Blind Co-founder and Head of Operations sharedhow the traditional workplace has been left behind:
It became the new norm, and I don’t think people would want to go back. Covid forced people to stay out of the office but you can’t force people to go back to the office because there are alternative jobs that offer working from home. Even if you are willing to pay them $30,000 more a year, that’s not even enough reason to make people come back to the office.
Blind surveyed 3,000 employees from 45 companies, including big american companies such as Amazon, Uber, JPMorgan, Google, to find out if they would rather work from home or receive a $30,000 yearly raise. 64% of them said that remote work and the benefits it brings to the table are far more important than having a raise.
Out of the 45 companies surveyed in the Blind data, only two saw more employees that prefer the $30,000 over working from home: JPMorgan (47%) and Qualcomm (42$).
