A Birmingham law firm has announced its entire staff will have their hours cut by two and a half hours a week, and keep the same salary.

A Birmingham law firm has announced its entire staff will have their hours cut by two and a half hours a week. 

DBS Law said the revised contracts – with no reduction in salary – were a reward for hard work as the business has grown in recent years.

The firm, which acquired two firms over the summer, posted £5.4m turnover in 2012/13, an increase of £250,000 over the previous year.

Chief executive Rob Bhol (pictured) said its 100 staff members have had to take on new skills and adapt to new technology over the past five years.

‘All our staff diligently applied themselves to improving productivity and this has paid great dividends for the business and for our customers. So we have decided to reward them with a shorter working week.’

Since announcing an ‘aggressive’ expansion strategy earlier this year DBS has acquired two other businesses: Hearne & Co from Birmingham and Andersons from Nottingham and Leicester.

Earlier this year DBS was awarded the customer service excellence standard by the Cabinet Office. To date it is the only legal services company to have achieved this.

A study published last month by economists at the independent thinktank New Economics Foundation called for the working week to be reduced to 30 hours. 

Time on Our Side argued that a shorter, more flexible working week would be beneficial to people, the environment and the economy. The Netherlands, Denmark and Germany have considerably shorter average hours than the UK but show no reduction in productivity.