Exclusive: Brits set to lobby employers for inflation-busting pay rise in response to cost of living crunch

Brits are set to lobby their employers for a pay rise in a bid to cope with a tightening cost of living squeeze, reveals exclusive research shared with City A.M. today.

Employers that fail to meet workers’ demands for a wage boost risk losing out on retaining and attracting top talent, according to the ADP Research Institute.

Some one in two workers are expecting their employer to boost their wages this year, with most ranking pay as their top factor luring them to a job.

“Pay is an even more pressing issue than normal right now and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future, with a clear knock-on effect on recruitment and retention,” Sirsha Halder, general manager UK and Ireland at ADP, told City A.M.

Strengthening wage expectations will worry officials at the Bank of England, who have warned the biggest risk to inflation remaining elevated is a tight jobs market producing pay rises that are not offset by greater productivity gains.

The research illustrates how historic high inflation is switching workers’ job priorities from favoring flexibility to ensuring their income is shielded from rising living costs.

The pandemic prompted a large proportion of the UK workforce to reassess their career goals and work life balance.

Around four in 10 workers cite flexibility as the most important factor for them in a job, according to the ADP Research Institute’s People at Work 2022: A Global Workforce View report, which surveyed around 33,000 workers in 17 countries.

Inflation hit a 30-year high of seven per cent last month.