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Cut your hours or cut jobs?

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19th Feb 2009
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Tax professionals are the most generous when it comes to reducing their working hours to save jobs in the recession.

As the economic downturn hits companies hard, many are being forced to cut costs in HR, but while lots of workers could face the chop, others are being asked to chop down their working hours instead.

A recent poll by specialist executive search consultancy GRS revealed that 56.5% of tax professionals would be prepared to decrease their hours to save a colleague’s job.

Those in the risk sector came in second, with 54.3% agreeing that they would consider this as an option, while insurance workers were the least charitable, with just 49.3% sacrificing their hours to help their co-workers.

The online survey of 2,000 City professionals uncovered divided opinions overall, with just 52.5% of the total number questioned saying they were willing to trim down their working week.

Lucinda Brown, Managing Director GRS UK, said “As the four day week spreads from the factory floor to the heart of the City, London’s professionals are increasingly having to face up to the fact that the future holds not only a reduced working week, but also pay cuts. The problem is that only 52% of City professionals are interested in a deal that might save their colleagues’ jobs – it seems they’d rather take a calculated risk of possibly losing their job than have their own salaries cut. And if only 52% of a company’s workforce is willing to back a scheme like this, savings may be too limited to make it a viable alternative to mass redundancies, especially when the threat of a divided company (between those that opt-in and those that refuse to) is taken into account”.

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