All 91,500 employees at John Lewis and Waitrose are to receive a bonus worth 10% of their salary.
The bonus is equivalent to more than 5 weeks’ pay for staff that have been employed by the John Lewis Partnership for the whole year.
The bonus has been awarded after the organisation announced profit before tax and bonuses of £435m in the year ending 30 January 2016.
As an employee-owned business, all 91,500 staff are partners in the organisation. This year’s partnership bonus is slightly lower than that awarded in 2015, when employees received a bonus worth 11% of their pay. John Lewis Partnership awarded a bonus of 15% of salary in 2014.
The organisation’s cash contributions to its pension scheme totalled £166m over the year. In February 2016 it paid £137m to the scheme in order to prepay 10 months-worth of pension contributions.
John Lewis Partnership is transitioning to a hybrid pension scheme that combines defined benefit (DB) and defined contribution (DC) pensions.
Sir Charlie Mayfield, chairman at John Lewis Partnership, said: “I am very pleased that 91,500 partners will receive a bonus of 10%, which is equivalent to more than 5 weeks' pay.
“Partners worked especially hard this year coping with unpredictable patterns of trade and the need to keep costs tight, making these results hard won and their bonus well deserved.
“Taken together with the rising cost of pensions, the total combined cost we have set aside in our income statement for bonus and pensions was higher than prior years.”
