Nearly a quarter said they would look for a new employer if asked to come back onsite
More than a quarter of employees in Hong Kong would demand a pay raise if asked to return to the office full time, according to a survey from Bloomberg Intelligence.
The survey, as reported by Bloomberg, revealed that 27% out of 350 people said they would ask for a salary increase if their employers would require them to return to the office for five days.
A majority of these respondents said they would ask for an increase of six per cent of more from their employers, according to the survey.
"#HongKong employers may need to offer pay rises of at least 6% to lure staff back to the office five days a week, our BI survey found," Bloomberg Intelligence said on X.
On the other hand, only 14% of the respondents said they would accept the office return at the same rate of pay.
And for another 24%, they said they would look for a new employer that offers flexible work arrangements, Bloomberg reported. This includes 10% willing to take a pay cut if it means getting flexibility, and 14% who will accept the same rate of pay from their new employer.
Patrick Wong, Bloomberg Intelligence analyst, said this shows that employers who would cut down on flexible work options could find it difficult to retain employees.
Many employees surveyed by Bloomberg Intelligence (36%) said they are already working in the office five days a week, back to traditional office arrangements before the pandemic made hybrid and remote work the norm.
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Office return in Japan
In Japan, the same survey from Bloomberg Intelligence also found that 20% of employees there would ask for a raise when required to return to the office five days a week.
Another 28% said they would stay with their employer at the same rate, while 16% said they would look for another employer offering flexible work arrangements.
Majority of employees in Japan (36%) are also already back to five days a week in the office, according to the Bloomberg Intelligence survey.
Office return push
The findings demonstrate the progress of the widespread office return push from executives over the past years that has driven tensions within organisations as employees want to continue their pandemic perks.
In fact, some employees even during the pandemic had left their previous employers because they return to the workplace. Others have said they were willing to take a pay cut in order to work remotely.
In Australia, a survey from Morgan McKinley's 2024 Salary Guide found that 47% of employees there would skip a pay rise if it meant getting flexible work arrangements. It comes as employers there agreed that retaining flexibility at work would need some kind of trade off, such as lower salaries.