Workers lose motivation with pay freezes

One in three workers who have recently experienced pay freezes at their place of work have been left feeling as though they have lost their motivation, new research has found.

According to the study by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), almost half of these employees stated that they understood why their management had made the decision to freeze pay as times were financially tough.

However, eight per cent of the employees polled claimed that they were angry that their pay had been frozen or they had received cuts to their benefits packages.

In Scotland, this figure stood at 22 per cent.

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Jon Terry, PwC head of rewards, said: “Pay and promotion freezes, changes to pension schemes, cuts in recruitment and slashed training budgets, combined with poor communication, have eroded the bonds of trust between some employers and their employees.”

Carolyn Jones, director of the Institute of Employment Rights, recently stated that it was important that managers discuss any plans for redundancies or pay freezes with their staff and look to get advice from the whole workforce on how best to deal with the financial downturn.