Working from home may mean less pay: Survey

LONDON • Dreaming of working remotely from that cottage in the hills? There is a good chance you will get paid less, according to a survey of human resource executives published yesterday.

Employees who move to cheaper locations to work permanently from home are also likely to have more limited career prospects, executive search firm Leathwaite said.

Forty-five per cent of the 250 HR executives who took part in the survey said wages and bonuses should be adjusted when people decide to work remotely in areas with a lower cost of living.

People working from home would be competing against a much bigger pool of potential rivals for their job, according to the HR executives, who worked for major listed companies operating in the United States, Britain and Asia.

"A characteristic of the modern workplace will be the increased use of a more competitive, remote-based global talent pool," Mr Andrew Wallace, managing partner at Leathwaite, said.

Two-thirds of the executives surveyed also thought workers would spend between two and three days a week in the office, while only 8 per cent predicted a return to five days a week. Nearly 40 per cent said the maximum number of workers in the office would be half its previous capacity.

Britain's official statistics office said last week that 36 per cent of working adults were working exclusively from home, with the country back under lockdown restrictions.

A separate report published yesterday by the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) showed that 28 per cent of large businesses in Britain were open to filling vacancies with people who did not live close to the office.

A poll of workers commissioned by the REC also found that only half felt British companies were doing a good job at recruiting efficiently.

BLOOMBERG

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on February 19, 2021, with the headline Working from home may mean less pay: Survey. Subscribe