An element of the BIS overall pay award for staff below the SCS is allocated to non-consolidated variable pay related to performance. These payments are used to drive high performance and form part of the pay award. There are two types of award: in-year bonuses, which consist of special individual performance awards and non-pay rewards that recognise strong performance in particularly demanding tasks for situations. Staff in receipt of a special bonus may also receive an annual performance award. Annual performance awards are paid to members of staff who receive a highly successful performance rating.
Non-consolidated variable pay awards are funded from within existing pay bill controls, and have to be re-earned each year against pre-determined targets and, as such, do not add to future pay bill costs.
Performance awards for the SCS are part of the pay system across the whole senior civil service, and are used to reward high performance sustained throughout the year, based on judgments of how well an individual has performed relative to their peers. The performance related pay scheme is designed to help drive high performance and support better public service delivery. Performance awards are non-consolidated and non-pensionable. The percentage of the pay bill set aside for performance-related awards for the SCS is based on recommendations from the independent Senior Salaries Review Body.
BIS was formed through a machinery of government change that occurred in June 2009. The Department was created by merging The Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) and The Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS). DIUS and BERR were themselves created as part of a machinery of government change in June 2007. This means that BIS in its current format did not exist to award performance awards in any of the previous three years.
The information in the following table has been drawn from various data sources and provides details for both of the former Departments that were merged to create BIS.
Department Financial year Number of staff who received "in year awards" Total value of "in year rewards" (£) Number of staff awarded end of year performance awards Total value of end of year performance awards (£) Total value of awards (£) BERR 2006-07 919 491,669 1,286 2,532,180 3,023,849 2007-08 1,238 693,386 1,065 2,265,502 2,958,888 2008-09 1,218 586,631 971 2,240,592 2,827,223 DIUS 2006-071 — — — — — 2007-08 273 21,125 24 185,916 207,041 2008-09 201 13,855 213 459,171 473,026 1 DIUS was not created until 2007 Notes: 1. DIUS was created by a MOG change that occurred in June 2007 and did not exist before this date. The majority of annual performance awards paid to staff in 2007-08 were issued by the Departments that staff had transferred from. 2. In all three years the total value of the performance awards paid was approximately 1.5 per cent. of the total Department’s pay bill.