Shepherd & Wedderburn is handing out cash to compensate all its staff who agreed to take unpaid leave last year.
Last year's economic squeeze left the Edinburgh firm (and pretty much everybody else) reeling. Despite the firm's 65 partners taking a 10% pay cut and a pay freeze (which will only thaw this October), the firm made 22 redundancies and more were feared.
In a last gasp move - similar to that at Norton Rose and Ashurst (both of which asked staff to work a four-day week) - S&W requested that staff take unpaid leave to weather the financial storm. That's the economic equivalent of the Blue Peter tortoise being put in the shed in a cardbox box for the winter. However 98% of staff supported the scheme.
Now that the green shoots are tentatively emerging, the Scottish firm is doing a rather decent thing and paying staff a bonus to compensate them for the salary they missed out on. Well, 50% of it anyway. So staff effectively took half a day's unpaid leave and half a day's paid holiday. Not bad.
The arrangement reflects the firm's improving prospects. Despite an 11% dip in revenues, profits are up 9%. Patrick Andrews, S&W's CEO, said "before the recession we embarked on the reshaping of a number of practice areas to improve future profitability. The downturn in the economy has exacerbated the effect of this, with a short-term impact on income, however they are without doubt the right things for us to do for the medium to long-term".
Tip Off ROF
Last year's economic squeeze left the Edinburgh firm (and pretty much everybody else) reeling. Despite the firm's 65 partners taking a 10% pay cut and a pay freeze (which will only thaw this October), the firm made 22 redundancies and more were feared.
In a last gasp move - similar to that at Norton Rose and Ashurst (both of which asked staff to work a four-day week) - S&W requested that staff take unpaid leave to weather the financial storm. That's the economic equivalent of the Blue Peter tortoise being put in the shed in a cardbox box for the winter. However 98% of staff supported the scheme.
Now that the green shoots are tentatively emerging, the Scottish firm is doing a rather decent thing and paying staff a bonus to compensate them for the salary they missed out on. Well, 50% of it anyway. So staff effectively took half a day's unpaid leave and half a day's paid holiday. Not bad.
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Some reeling Scotsmen yesterday |
The arrangement reflects the firm's improving prospects. Despite an 11% dip in revenues, profits are up 9%. Patrick Andrews, S&W's CEO, said "before the recession we embarked on the reshaping of a number of practice areas to improve future profitability. The downturn in the economy has exacerbated the effect of this, with a short-term impact on income, however they are without doubt the right things for us to do for the medium to long-term".