Staff at London law firm can work from home full-time – if they take 20% pay cut

theguardian.com:

Staff at a top London law firm have been told they can work from home permanently – but they will have to take a 20% pay cut.

Managing partners at Stephenson Harwood are offering lawyers and other staff the option as City firms try to move beyond solely office-based working in a post-pandemic cultural shift to flexible and remote models.

Junior lawyers at the company have starting salaries of £90,000, meaning anyone taking up the officer would lose about £18,000.

Stephenson Harwood, one of the top 50 highest earning legal firms in the UK and with its headquarters in London, employs more than 1,100 people and has offices in Paris, Greece, Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea.

A spokesperson for the firm told the Times that the new working policy would apply to staff at its London office and most of the company’s international offices. Partners will not be eligible, though. Full equity partners receive an average of £685,000 annually.

The new salary sacrifice for full remote working policy is being introduced after the company’s experience of recruiting lawyers during the coronavirus pandemic who were not based in London, where living costs tend to be higher.

However, the company said it expected only a few staff to take up the full-time work from home option because “for the vast majority of our people, our hybrid working policy works well”.

Staff already have the option of working remotely for two days a week.

“Like so many firms, we see value in being in the office together regularly, while also being able to offer our people flexibility,” the spokesman said.

While many firms are looking at ways to entice workers thriving on flexible and remote working to return to the office, Airbnb has moved in the other direction, announcing