Over the past five years, there has been a noticeable rise in workers accepting promotions without (immediate) pay rises.

While job satisfaction, job perks, and quality of life are preferred to higher wages for many people, we wanted to discover just how many Brits would accept a promotion without a pay rise. The study identified their reasons for doing so and highlighted how different job sectors responded.

The results found that 20.5% of Brits (across all sectors) would take a promotion without a pay rise, while 42.9% would consider it. 36.6% of Brits would turn the offer down.

Of those surveyed, workers who would accept or consider a promotion without a pay rise said their main motivation for doing so was to secure a better job in the future (68.6%).

23.1% of those surveyed said they would take or consider a promotion without a pay rise to increase their authority over colleagues, while 9.1% said they would do so to impress a date or a loved one.

Broken down by sector, Marketers were the most likely to accept a pay rise without a promotion (58%), while those in Hospitality were the least likely (9.9%).

Many people set themselves career goals, but how far would UK workers be willing to go in order to achieve them? As part of our study, workers were asked what steps they had taken in order to climb the career ladder.

The most common method for attempting to gain a promotion was to take on additional work to impress senior colleagues, with 32.5% admitting to doing so. This was closely followed by paying complements to senior colleagues and/or bosses (25.1%), while flirting came in third at 12.9%.

In terms of gender, males were prepared to go to greater lengths than their female counterparts to secure a promotion, with a higher percentage answering yes to each question in the categories below.

Around 10% of Brits admitted to sabotaging a rival colleague’s career for personal gain, while 9.6% offered money to a colleague in exchange for a promotion. Finally, the study found that 8.3% of UK workers admitted to blackmailing their bosses for a more senior position.

On average, British workers change employers every five years.

To discover the reason why Brits are changing jobs so frequently, we asked UK workers what their main motivations were for leaving – or wanting to leave – their current position.

The results showed that only a quarter of those surveyed would not recommend their place of work to others.

Employees working in the Beauty and Wellbeing sector were found to be most job satisfied in the UK, with just 10% stating they would not recommend their current employer to others. Conversely, those in Hospitality positions were the least happy with 35.2% admitting they would not recommend their employer.

Those working in the Transport and Distribution sector were the second least job satisfied (33.1% would not recommend their current employer), followed by Retail and Customer Services in third, with 32.1% not willing to recommend their current employer.

The average working week for British employees is 37.5 hours. In some cases, workers can spend more time with their colleagues than with their own family members, leaving plenty of time to learn their quirks and behaviours.

With so much time spent in the workplace, we asked UK workers what office behaviours irritated them the most.

The results showed that poor food hygiene and cleanliness ranked highest among office grievances, with 85.4% of UK workers objecting to rotting food in fridges. A further 83.2% took issue with messy kitchens and bathrooms, which came in higher than discriminatory, rude, and offensive language complaints (81.75%).

According to our findings, being beaten to promotions and pay rises by colleagues lingered on Brits minds the most.

The average time survey respondents were bothered by such news was 57.36 working hours – over 50% longer than hearing co-workers use rude/offensive/racist remarks (36.72 hours).

We asked UK workers what actions they have recently – or historically – taken to mitigate inappropriate, inconsiderate, and/or offensive co-worker behaviours.

Verbal confrontation ranked highest, with 40.7% of Brits admitting to calling out a co-worker’s behavior to their face.

32.2% of those surveyed admitted to having recently or historically complained to their boss about a co-worker, while nearly a third (27.5%) of Brits admitted to badmouthing colleagues and rubbishing their work to fellow co-workers when annoyed or offended.

In addition to this, 12.8% of Brits admitted to getting into physical fights in the workplace when irritated, while 9.9% admitted to engaging in attempts to sabotage their co-workers’ career.

In terms of Industry breakdowns, Beauty and Wellbeing employees were the most likely to get involved in physical fights (26%), as well as ranking first for revealing personal information about colleagues to their boss (38%).

Media workers were the most likely to try and embarrass colleagues in front of clients (41.2%), as well as being the most likely to try and sabotage a co-worker’s career (29.4% of those surveyed).

Those working in the energy sector are the most likely to complain to their boss about a co-worker (44% admitted to recently or historically doing so).