Eversheds to pay staff for top BD ideas

The firm has created an innovation forum, which encourages everyone from support staff to senior partners to submit their business ideas to a judging panel that will select a winning proposal each month for a cash prize of £500.

At the end of the year the person who came up with the best overall idea will be awarded £20,000.

HR director Angus MacGregor, who sits on the judging panel with chief executive Bryan Hughes and three other partners, said: “We wanted to push this because Eversheds is about innovation and so far there’s been a tremendous amount of ideas that have come out of it. People are starting to look at things differently to enhance the way we work as a firm.”

MacGregor added that the scheme was about creating a platform for “creative business thinking”.

There have been four winning ideas since the new scheme was first introduced in January including a new consultancy programme called Eversheds Align, which offers in-house legal teams advice on effective management structures.

Another winning idea has been to develop a business development database, which allows lawyers at the firm to pool all their client information together in one place.