Weightmans to restore Covid-19 pay cuts earlier than planned

Law firm Weightmans is to return all its employees to full pay after implementing pay cuts to manage the financial constraints of the Covid-19 (Coronavirus) pandemic.

The organisation introduced business-wide temporary pay cuts for its 1,300 employees in April 2020. Staff with salaries of up to £25,000 per annum received a 10% reduction in pay, those earning £25,000 or above received a 20% reduction in pay. Employees earning £18,000 or less saw no changes to their pay.

Weightmans had originally planned to return employees to full pay at the end of October, however, has been able to bring this forward due to positive business performance. The organsiation will also bring forward pay reviews that were initially planned for October 2020.

John Schorah, founder at Weightmans, said: "Like most businesses, we have challenges in our business with the pandemic, but in doing much better than our prudent scenario planning, we have been able to not only bring that review forward but restore our peoples' pay two months earlier that the first planned review.

"The support from our people on the decisions we have made while managing uncertainty has been quite humbling for me. I can not perhaps say exceptional because I know so many businesses have also treated their people with total transparency and fairness during this pandemic.

"People talk about learnings from the pandemic that will improve the bottom line of business around cost. If we can keep up current levels transparency and openness when hopefully we begin to manage less uncertainty, that will be even more beneficial."