The Work Life Balance Trade Off
The Covid-19 crisis has shoved work and home lives under the same roof for many professionals. On Blind, an anonymous professional network, with 3.6M verified users, an Amazon employee ran a poll asking, “Would you take a 35% paycut to work at a company you like with better work life balance?”
The poll had 6,954 responses and robust dialogue with 377 professionals commenting on their own experiences, here are some key learnings:
- 36% of professionals say they would take a 35% paycut to work at a company with better work life balance.
- 30% of Facebook professionals would take the pay cut
- 34% of Microsoft professionals would take the pay cut
- 28% of JPMorgan Chase & Co. professionals would take the pay cut
- 42% of IBM professionals would take the pay cut
You can see the report highlighting the overall responses here.
A user at Comcast responded to the poll saying, “Nobody wants to acknowledge that having poor wlb is expensive…. Off hours Ubers, eating take out, not being able to go do groceries, the fact you can’t focus on bills and etc. Maybe it’s still theoretically more money in the end, but take a slight pay cut and being to enjoy life, enjoy a relationship, deal with your kids if you have them”
As professionals realize their careers will forever be changed by the pandemic, we can hope that one major shift will be a move away from the harmful assumption that a 24/7 work culture is working well for anyone. We encourage professionals maintain a healthy lifestyle by creating healthy habits that promote work life balance.