Law firm Linklaters has introduced a bonus sacrifice scheme to enable staff to sacrifice their bonuses into its group personal pension plan (GPP).
Employees are due to receive their bonuses on 30 June, and have until 3 June to submit their request to sacrifice all, or part, of the amount before it is subject to tax and national insurance contributions (NICs).
Employees who choose to take part in the bonus sacrifice scheme are also required to submit an electronic form which, once processed, allows payroll to make the additional contributions in to the GPP.
Ann Guiney, reward and benefits adviser, said: “We have always allowed people to contribute their bonus into the GPP, so it was an obvious extension of this to allow people to sacrifice their bonus.”
Linklaters operates two bonus arrangements: a profit-based scheme for all employees, and a performance-based scheme for certain groups of staff. Both can be sacrificed into the GPP.
Guiney said it would be interesting to see what impact the recession has on take-up levels in the scheme’s first year. “We have to look at it with the backdrop of the current economic climate,” she explained. “People will be thinking carefully about what they are spending their bonus on, which is not at the level it has been in previous years.”