Nearly two-fifths of office workers would rather see a workmate made redundant than take a cut to their own salary, a survey has revealed.

A total of 38 per cent of employees said they would rather to see a colleague out of a job than see their own pay packet suffer, according to the poll.

But 62 per cent of employees showed a more loyal attitude by saying they would be happy to take a drop in their earnings to save a colleague's position.

The research shows that money is the 'sole motivating factor' for a significant minority, said officebroker.com, an office space company that carried out the survey.

The poll also revealed that almost half of workers surveyed (48 per cent) would make cutting back on lunch breaks the first office sacrifice if times were hard.

Giving up cigarette breaks came second (14 per cent) followed by weekends off (12 per cent) and company cars (8 per cent).
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Chris Meredith, head of sales at officebroker.com, said: 'Many people believe the way to motivate people is simply to give them more money, but our results show that this view is far too simplistic.

'Nearly two thirds of those polled said they would be willing to take a pay cut to keep somebody else in the job which shows just how important a good team ethic can be in the workplace.

'For some people, money is their sole motivating factor so it's no surprise that more than a third of those surveyed said they would be happy to see a colleague fired if it would benefit them financially.'