John Lewis slashes employee bonus to 6 percent

London - The John Lewis has cut its annual employee bonus to 6 percent for this year, down from 10 percent last year as the company's board of directors chose to hold onto more of its annual profits to help strengthen its balance sheet.

"The Board has awarded a Bonus of 6 percent, which is equivalent to more than 3 weeks’ pay," said Sir Charlie Mayfield, Chairman of John Lewis Partnership in a statement. "Bonus is lower because the Board has decided to retain more of our annual profits in order to strengthen our balance sheet. This allows us to maintain our level of investment in the face of what we expect to be an increasingly uncertain market this year, while absorbing the costs associated with adapting the Partnership for the future."

The announcement comes as John Lewis publishes its unaudited annual results for the 52 weeks ended January 28, 2017, which sees gross sales up 3.2 percent for the year. The Partnership previously noted in January workers annual bonus was likely to be "significantly" lower this year and is now at its lowest levels since the 1950s, when it sat at 4 percent. In total the Board has allotted 89.4 million pounds to the Partnership bonus, which comes out at 6 percent of a worker's salary who is with the company for the whole year.

In addition, the John Lewis Partnership announced it was putting more money into pay, which reflects its goal to create better jobs for its higher performing Partners, one of the three elements of its strategy for the future. "As a part of that we are changing the nature and shape of roles within the Partnership and we have made a number of announcements to that effect this year," added Mayfield. "We will also be accelerating investment in innovation for customers across Waitrose and John Lewis. For example, from May we will begin rolling out technology to ensure Partners have access to more information at their fingertips to enhance service delivery."

Photos: John Lewis, Facebook