Each employee with more than one year’s service, irrespective of their grade, will receive 25,000 shares valued at approximately £250 in the firm, which ranked at number 30 in Accountancy’s UK league table of firms with a fee income in 2013 of £20.3m.

Price Bailey says it expects shares to go up by around 10% a year and also anticipates paying an annual dividend.

Martin Clapson, Price Bailey managing director, said he believes the share scheme will help to further promote an environment where people feel valued and appropriately rewarded, and can help drive the business forward through a higher sense of inclusion, involvement and reward.

Clapson said: ‘We know we have excellent relationships with our clients, with many having been with us for more than 10 years. However, what enables these close professional relationships are the people at Price Bailey. I wanted to formally recognise their valuable contribution by giving them a share in the firm, to ensure that we harness the best ideas and retain our people, whether they are in support functions, management or a fee earning role.’

Early this year, Grant Thornton said it was considering a move to implement a share enterprise model, which is currently the subject of a consultation across the firm.

This would allow for future profits to be shared among all 4,500 staff rather than restricted to partners, in a similar approach to retailer John Lewis. Sacha Romanovitch, who takes over as GT’s CEO from July, has said her own pay will be limited to a maximum of 20 times the average salary in the firm.