An employee-owned Scottish home care company has paid staff a £500 bonus promised by Nicola Sturgeon out of its own pocket amid delays with the roll out of the government scheme.

Highland Home Carers also made the payments tax-free so staff would receive the full amount.

The £500 payment was announced by the First Minister in November as a thank you to NHS and social care staff for their ‘heroic’ efforts during the pandemic.

But the award has been hit by delays getting money to care workers, after health service employees received their payments earlier this year.

Campbell Mair, Managing Director of Highland Home Carers (HHC), said they had taken the decision to pay the bonus in February, tax-free and were reimbursed by government this month.  

He told healthandcare.scot getting the funds back from government was “not as easy as [it] could have been” but added: “Employers need to take and show some responsibility, and ethical leadership. It is within the gift of employers to make their own decisions and set their own timescales.”

Inverness-based HHC is the largest employee-owned company in Scotland and, with more than 400 staff, one of the biggest private employers in the Highlands.

Following a stalemate with the UK government, payments for health and social care staff remained subject to tax meaning many will see their payment reduced.

Trade union UNISON said some workers could be waiting until July to receive theirs.

Concerns have also been raised about the effect of the payment on lower-paid staff, who could see their benefits reduced as a result of their wages being higher in one month.

Mr Mair added: “Our way of dealing with it was to say thank you to the Health Secretary for doing this, and then look at what the quickest, most tax-efficient way we could get this payment to our staff was.

“We are very fortunate because of our employee-owned structure as a company that we were able to find a route to deliver the money tax free and to exempt it from any assessment purposes linked to people’s benefits.

“…There is risk attached because we had to wait months before getting the money back in again, but that was our decision.”

“For us, employee ownership is a means to an end – not an end in itself…It is the means by which we seek to improve the lives of the social care workforce – that is one of our core purposes – we want to improve the lives of one of the most crucial workforces in our society that has a significant economic and national value, and an immeasurable health economic value.

“…It means we can make decision like this one on the £500 payment; it is an obvious and effortless decision to get that money out there.”

HHC announced that all frontline care workers and support staff would be paid the Real Living wage of £10 an hour from the start of last month. Mr Mair says the fact they are an employee-owned organisation has meant they have been able to increase front line rates of pay by over 11% over the past two years.

Read more: Analysis: The politics of the pay rise; Wales to hand out tax-free covid bonus; Criticism as social care pay rise half that of NHS; Concerns £500 ‘thank you’ bonus will hit benefits