Would You Take a Pay Cut to Work from Home?

Approximately two in five workers would take a pay cut of 5% or more in exchange for working remotely. In fact, nearly one in 10 said they’d give up 20% of their salary if they could work from home.

Those are the headlines of Harvard Business School recent survey of more than 2,000 workers, across industries and business units.

Much like IOFM’s Best Teams to Work For survey, financial operations practitioners want to work from home. Most currently work from home two days per week, but say they could be lured away to another organization for a third or more work-from-home (WFH) day. 

IOFM’s data found that AP and AR staff that got to work from home more often would require a far smaller increase in base compensation to be satisfied. The HBS survey goes one step further, stating that employees would be willing to take a pay cut in exchange for a more conducive WFH policy.

The HBS study found that remote work is valued the most by those who: worked from home during the pandemic, possess college degrees and are under age 50.

Both AP and AR practitioners tend to be overwhelmingly female (80% of IOFM’s sample are women). The HBS study found that women were more likely than men to accept a significant pay cut (20% or more) to work from home. The researchers thought this might be due to childcare responsibilities, but they found few differences based on whether the respondent was the primary caregiver.