Gender Pay Gap Report 2020

Under the law, men and women must receive equal pay for the same or broadly similar work, work rated as equivalent under a job evaluation scheme or work of equal value. Knights has a clear policy of paying employees equally for the same or equivalent work.

Knights’ gender pay gap has reduced from the 2019 report. While there has been a reduction, we remain committed to continuing to take steps to ensure that our staff are paid fairly for the work that they do. We remain confident that our gender pay gap does not stem from paying women differently for the same or equivalent value work, rather it is a reflection of the type of roles that our female staff predominantly work in.

Knights is proud of its commitment to fairness and equality to all of its workforce, we are working hard to continue to erode historical gender pay gaps arising through restricted access to the legal profession generally; this is demonstrated by the fact that 63% of those promoted to Partner in the reporting period were female. We continue to promote on merit alone, which has resulted in a greater proportion of promotions for female fee earning members of staff as compared to male. Furthermore, Knights has focussed on family friendly rights within the business, matching the pay available for those on maternity leave and shared parental leave, and accommodating a wide variety of flexible working arrangements, with 31% of the workforce working part time in the reporting period.

While it is still the case that a greater proportion of women as compared to men work part time, we seek to ensure there is no impact on salary resulting from working part time hours.

The promotions data does not include data about promotions within firms acquired by Knights as this data is not gathered on acquisition with the exception of the award of training contracts.

Knights takes care in its review of remuneration across the business; as our staff do not have monetary targets pay increases are awarded based on merit, taking into account the overall contribution made to the business over the preceding 12 months. We continue to strive to reward our staff based on merit alone and feedback from our colleagues has been consistently in favour of salary reviews to reflect performance rather than using set criteria or pay grades. Staff are invited to challenge any decisions about remuneration without fear of reproach, and we pride ourselves on our transparent and even handed approach to remuneration across the business as a whole.

When acquiring other businesses, Knights takes particular care when reviewing the salaries offered, and seeks to make adjustments where appropriate to ensure that staff are rewarded for the work done including non-financial measures of performance and taking into account market rates where relevant. This process takes place in the 12 months following an acquisition to ensure that a fair assessment can be made.

As a general rule, Knights do not pay bonuses as we prefer to pay a higher non-discretionary salary and offer improved employee benefits such as enhanced maternity pay and company sick pay. However, we do from time to time inherit bonus schemes when acquiring other businesses, the data includes those individuals who were contractually entitled to a bonus payment arising out of a historical arrangement. The approach to bonus payments is reflected in the fact that only 3% of staff received any bonus in the reporting period.