The Guardian is furloughing 100 non-editorial staff and cutting back on casual workers, as well as implementing pay cuts in response to financial concerns around COVID-19.

According to the Press Gazette, the financial outlook for the first six months of this financial year identifies revenue as being down £20 million.

To combat this, the King’s Cross-based publication is putting many of its non-editorial workers on furlough and hoping to save several million through a range of measures.

Full salary

The staff on furlough will still get their full salary through a top-up on top of the government’s pledged 80%, while planned pay rises have been frozen for “at least six months”.

The Guardian’s executives have also agreed to a 20% pay cut, according to the Press Gazette, while the Board will take a 30% fee cut.

Staff have also been invited to take a voluntary cut in working hours, which would see a proportional cut in salary.

In March, The Guardian reviewed its spending in the face of the oncoming crisis, managing to make £10 million of savings.

In an email to staff, Editor-in-chief Kath Viner and Chief Executive Annette Thomas said: “The Guardian is better placed than many news organisations to weather difficulties thanks to the hard work of the last four years.

“Even so, it is clear that we will need to adapt, as we always have, in order to serve Guardian readers and meet the challenges and opportunities ahead.”

The Guardian is funded by not-for-profit group Scott Trust Limited, an external company which supports the newspaper through an endowment of at least £1 billion. The Guardian is not funded by any online paywall like many other mainstream names, and has recently increased its requests for readers to become paid supporters of the newspaper.

In the 2018/19 financial year, the media provider took an operating profit of £800,000, breaking even for the first time in many years.