What would you take a pay cut for?

It’s the kind of question that sparks a quick gut response but, when you sit with it, the answer gets complicated. For workers across Australia and New Zealand, the trade-offs between salary, wellbeing, flexibility, and values have never been sharper.

According to LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence Index, nearly one in three Australians (32%) say they’d be willing to compromise on their salary if it meant more flexibility. The same number (31%) would do it for stronger values alignment, while 29% would accept less money for a more reasonable workload.

The story slightly shifts when we look at our own survey of 760 professionals. Flexibility ranked lower, with just 23% saying they’d take a pay cut for it. A bigger share of 35% said they’d do it for work-life balance and to avoid burnout. Only 4% cared enough about values alignment to trade salary, while a blunt 38% made it clear: “Pay cut? Hard pass.”

The reality check

The comments from our survey tell a bigger story about trust, trade-offs, and the limits of compromise. A few standouts:

• “Do the top brass ever get asked this question?”
• “I have taken a pay cut when I could get a better work-life balance… but most people need the money as cost of living is not reducing.”
• “I’ll take values alignment, work life balance and flexibility — and expect a pay rise because my productivity will be higher.”
• “Why would anyone take a cut in pay… when you know the CEO and most of the C-suite are still making bank off your personal efforts? Wake up people and demand what you are worth.”

The sentiment is clear: while people want balance and flexibility, they’re not naïve about the financial pressures they’re under, nor the inequities they see in executive pay. Salary remains a non-negotiable foundation and in today’s economy, many feel they shouldn’t have to choose between being paid fairly and working in a way that sustains them.

Flexibility is still king, but context matters

Since COVID, flexibility has stayed firmly in the “candidate need” category. But our teams see nuance emerging across regions:

• In Canberra, Managing Director Rob Ning notes: “While flexibility is still a number one priority, we’re seeing more people being open to full-time office work if all other conditions are right.”
• In Auckland, New Zealand Country Manager Kara Smith adds: “Remote work and work flexibility is still a strong preference. But employers are increasingly requesting 3-4 days in-office. The hybrid tension is back.”

In other words, employees are still prioritising flexibility but it isn’t an automatic “work from home or bust” equation anymore. The conversation is shifting toward how flexibility is structured, and whether it actually helps people live and work better.

Enter: the four-day workweek

This is where the four-day workweek lands. Despite some companies retreating from their experiments, a new Resolve Political Monitor poll shows two-thirds of Australians (66%) support the idea of moving to four days. An almost equal share (64%) back the idea of enshrining flexible work rights in law.

This tracks closely with the priorities we heard in our own survey. Workers are open to new models if it means more balance and less burnout, but they don’t want to see their pay packets shrink to make it happen.

Employers toying with a four-day week as a cost-saving exercise (by trimming pay alongside hours) risk missing the point entirely. As one respondent put it: “If I am asked to take a pay cut, what’s your trade-off?” Workers are watching for genuine investment in wellbeing, not sleight-of-hand productivity hacks.

What employers should take away

The lesson here isn’t that employees are unwilling to bend as many already have; taking lower-paid NGO roles for values alignment, or trading salary for more sustainable workloads. The lesson is that pay cuts are not the lever to pull if you want to win trust, loyalty, and discretionary effort.

Instead, forward-looking employers should be asking:

• How can we offer flexibility that truly supports work-life balance, not just “two days at home”?
• What structural changes, like a four-day workweek, could reduce burnout without reducing pay?
• Are we listening to employee sentiment and closing the perception gap between what workers want and what leaders assume they want?
• How do we address the equity issue when employees see executives rewarded while they’re asked to sacrifice?

In short: workers aren’t against change. They’re against compromise that feels one-sided.

The bottom line

Australians are clear about what they’d like to see: balance, flexibility, and fair workloads. They’re also clear about what they won’t accept: sacrificing pay while living costs rise and executives continue to profit.

The four-day workweek is part of that bigger story and not just a headline trend, but a signal that employees are hungry for smarter ways of working that don’t come at the expense of their wallets.

If you want to know what else our teams on the ground are seeing in the market, get in touch with our experts.