Face-to-Display Workforce: Forfeiting Pay Cuts in Favour of Flexibility

The coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the urgency of addressing flexibility in the workplace. Many employees are still undecided about whether to stay in their office premises or to work from home, as well as about the effect of their choice on income. In other words, would their flexibility in selecting their workplaces affect it? How would they react, if it is accompanied by a pay cut? Is working from home without any cuts the dream of employees? Our paper analyses the opinions of e-employees in three countries: Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Six hundred face-to-display employees participated in our research. The quantitative study was conducted with the aim of analysing their responses, examining who would like to benefit from flexibility accompanied with his/her reduced salary and what that would mean for the future. The data indicate that Austrian e-employees are much more open to salary cuts than those in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The results also show that a higher age correlates positively with employees’ readiness to accept pay cuts. Similarly, the smaller the cut, the higher the readiness to accept it. The gender comparison shows that Czech and Slovak male breadwinners agree statistically more frequently ready to accept a reduction of their wages than women of the same nationality do.