Benefits and rewards

Pay Our salaries are highly competitive and are amongst the highest in the legal sector outside London. We link pay to your contribution so you know your hard work is being recognised. Everyone benefits from our annual bonus payment which is linked to salary and the performance of the firm.

Holiday Everyone is entitled to 25 days’ annual leave (plus bank holidays) with extra days awarded after three, six and ten years of service.

Pension We operate a self-invested personal pension through Hargreaves Lansdown. Pension contributions are as follows:

Employer Contribution 5%
Employee contribution (minimum) 3%
Total contribution 8% (minimum)

Life Assurance In the event of death in service, we will pay out four times your salary.

Family Friendly Benefits
Maternity, paternity, shared parental and adoption leave

At Burges Salmon, we understand the importance of supporting our employees through various stages of life. Our family-friendly benefits are designed to provide flexibility for our growing families during these pivotal moments, ensuring they can focus on their new family member without financial worry, and reflect our commitment to fostering a supportive and inclusive workplace, where every employee feels valued and empowered to balance their professional and personal lives.

Our enhanced maternity and adoption leave policies offers 26 weeks of full pay, provided you have 26 weeks of service by the qualifying week.

For those looking to share the joys and responsibilities of early parenthood, our shared parental leave matches the maternity pay enhancement and our paternity leave benefits, offer four weeks of full pay, recognising the vital role that paternity leave plays in bonding and supporting the family unit, all with the same service requirement of 26 weeks at the qualifying week.

Parental support

• Everyone is offered the opportunity to attend coaching sessions when they go on, and return from, family leave.
• Everyone has access to an online parental leave toolkit coaching module designed to help people manage the parent transition.
• Everyone has access to the Work+Family Space which is a customised website giving access to a range of services to help people manage their working and family life.
• We have a parents’ network that offers support and talks that may be of interest.

Health and Wellbeing
Wellbeing

To us, quality of life is just as important as quality of work. That’s why your wellbeing will always be top of our agenda. We’ll give you the flexibility, personally and professionally, to help you get where you want to be.

Health

We offer private medical insurance to all our people which is currently provided by BUPA. Everyone is entitled to a free health check with BUPA when they start at the firm and every two years after that.

We pay for an annual eye test and contribute to the cost of glasses. We also provide annual flu jabs for everyone who works here.

Our people are covered by a group income protection scheme. This means that your salary will be protected (subject to a successful claim), if you are unable to work for a prolonged period of time for health reasons.

We offer an employee assistance programme, which offers support on a variety of matters including second opinion medical, counselling and debt advice. It is free and confidential.

Other wellbeing benefits include:

• Private GP service
• Digital GP service
• Mental health first aiders
• Annual wellbeing week
• Weekly wellbeing bulletins
• Financial wellbeing sessions

Flexible working If it’s right for our clients, our business and for you, we’ll support you with flexible working wherever possible. Whether you want to work part time, from home, alternative or compressed hours, we’ll consider every flexible working request. Our hybrid working model means you can work from wherever you want, subject to business needs. We don’t tell you how many days you need to be in the office – instead, we trust you to use your judgement and make sure you’re able to meet the needs of clients and colleagues, whilst balancing work and home life.

Volunteering All our people have the opportunity to volunteer and currently nearly 60% of them do. We don’t limit our people to a set number of days and you can do as much as you and your team think is reasonable. We facilitate volunteering opportunities for you as an individual and in teams but you can also do something linked to your passions through your own connections.

Training Burges Salmon offers a comprehensive training programme, both professional and skills based. Our skills curriculum is designed to offer you learning in what you need when you need it and is variety of instructor led courses as well as a variety of resources. Both are accessed via a mobile learning platform that we call LAB, although our friendly People Development team can guide you too. The firm focuses on your career, too, with guidance and sessions that will help you move through your career with the appropriate support.

Personal and professional development Supporting your personal and professional development is our top priority. In addition to the support you’ll receive from our in-house development team, you’ll also have the opportunity to complete external courses and qualifications that are relevant to your role. The firm offers language classes for a variety of abilities that are open to everyone. These include French, German, Italian, Spanish and Mandarin.

Outstanding offices Bristol – We have been based at One Glass Wharf since 2010, which is located at the heart of the Temple Quay area of Bristol, only five minutes from Temple Meads station. The building was designed especially for us and is one of central Bristol’s most eco-friendly buildings.

Edinburgh – We opened our Edinburgh office in May 2019. Located in the Exchange District, we’re based in the heart of the city’s leading financial and business centre. Atria One, is BREEAM rated ‘Excellent’ and you will be in walking distance to Edinburgh’s cultural venues, shopping and an abundance of eating options, from sandwich bars to fine dining.

Travel Around 30 per cent of our people either walk, run or cycle to work. We provide on-site bike racks, shower facilities and locker rooms to use before work to make it easier for you to incorporate exercise into your daily routine.

We work with Dr Bike and offer free maintenance sessions several times a year. Our support for the Cycle to Work scheme also enables you to make big savings on the purchase of a new bike and pay for it in installments via a tax free salary sacrifice.

We offer season ticket loans for those wishing to travel by rail or bus.

Social Everyone has the opportunity to join our firm wide social club, BSocial which offers members a wide range of discounts on theatre, cinema and sports activities.

We currently have football, hockey and running clubs with pilates, yoga and circuits classes available at the office. There is even a board game club for those with more relaxed leisure pursuits! We also offer subsidised gym membership.

The social club organises other events and trips away. Recent events have included wine and cheese tasting, bread making, cupcake decorating, weekend trips to London, a Belgium Beer Festival and make-up tutorials.

There is a firmwide social every other month where everyone gathers together to enjoy a few drinks and nibbles. The firmwide summer party is a key event on the Burges Salmon calendar. In the past we have been to Bristol Zoo, had an indoor fairground complete with dodgem cars and a Las Vegas themed ball.