Supporting your employees
As general living costs soar, many employers are considering what they can to do support their teams over the coming months (and beyond).
One contact has agreed to pay all utility bills for their employees until the new year, others are considering one-off payments to help with the cost of bills.
“Trivial” cash benefits of up to £50 are relatively safe from a tax perspective, but anything of more value will have tax implications and we recommend that you talk to your accountant about how to deal with these. Any payments you make to employees should be reported to HMRC provide further detail and offer an employer’s helpline.
Other ways in which to support your employees include:
· Consider assistance with a one-off or regular additional financial payments
· Review and compare current rates of pay against industry standard, local benchmarking and rates of inflation.
· Consider flexible working requests favourably e.g. home or office working arrangements, or condensing the working week can save a lengthy trip into workplace and therefore giving fuel savings.
· Look after your teams’ mental health (see below).
· Tax efficient initiatives – for example, salary sacrifice scheme or a wellbeing fund of a set amount, processed as a taxable benefit in kind, to cover programme/s chosen by employees and based on your company values. Take tax advice from your accountant on any schemes that might be available.
· Financial education – signpost your employees to organisations that will be able to support them. For example, https://www.stepchange.org/.
· Get their pay right in the first place!
In any case, ask your employees on what they might like help with. Be cautious about how this is worded as you do not want to create false hope that any suggestions are a foregone conclusion.
If you’re looking for payroll support, we can help with that too! Contact us for more information.
Here to help
If you have any questions please drop us a line at [email protected] call us on 01449 708999 or call/text 07789 038409.