Half of City workers would take cut to save a colleague’s job

Barely half of City professionals would willingly cut their own hours to save a colleague’s job, research has found.

A survey of more than 2,100 London professionals by consultancy GRS found that 52.2% would reduce their weekly hours rather than see co-workers lose their jobs.

Lucinda Brown, managing director at GRS UK, said the numbers reflected the City’s gambling nature.“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,” she said.

“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.”

“If only half 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 is taken into account.”

Last week, more than 80% of staff at KPMG backed a plan to reduce working hours to save jobs.

Several car manufacturers have recently moved employees onto shorter working weeks and offered sabbaticals in a bid to avoid making redundancies.