Why salary sacrifice charging is the EV perk employees actually love

Most employee benefits get a polite thank you. Charging salary sacrifice tends to get a genuine one, because it solves a real cost that employees notice every month. Here is what actually drives that reaction, and why it is worth understanding if you are deciding whether to add it to your benefits package.

It attacks a cost employees already feel

Company car and salary sacrifice EV schemes solve the cost of the car. They do nothing for the cost of running it. Charging is the one ongoing EV cost that most employees pay for entirely out of their own pocket, often without realising how much it adds up to over a year.

When a benefit removes a cost people were already unhappy about, it lands differently to a benefit that is simply nice to have. Charging salary sacrifice sits in the first category.

The saving is immediate and visible

Unlike benefits that pay off gradually, the saving from charging salary sacrifice shows up on the very first payslip after enrolment. Employees pay for charging out of gross salary instead of net pay, so income tax and National Insurance are calculated on the lower figure. That is a saving of 20 to 50% depending on tax band, with no behaviour change required.

• Basic rate taxpayers save around 28% combined
• Higher rate taxpayers save around 42% combined
• Additional rate taxpayers save around 47% combined

Employees can see exactly what that means for them using the savings calculator, which tends to be the moment enthusiasm turns into sign-up.

It removes admin, not just cost

Before a scheme like this existed, employees charging in public had to pay at the charger, keep a record, and in some companies submit an expense claim to get any of it back. That process is slow and it puts the financial risk on the employee in the meantime.

Salary sacrifice charging removes that entirely. The employee charges at home, at work, or at any of the UK's 76,000+ public chargepoints through the app or charge card, and the cost is pulled straight into a single monthly payroll deduction. There is nothing to submit and nothing to chase.

It works for people without home charging

Roughly nine million UK households have no off-street parking, which means no cheap overnight home charging rate. Those employees have historically paid the most for the same electric car, entirely in public at rapid rates. Salary sacrifice charging is one of the few benefits that gives this group the same saving as employees who can charge at home, because the tax relief applies to the money spent, not the location it was spent in.

It sits on top of what you already offer

None of this requires ripping up your existing EV benefits. The Charge Scheme bolts on to any current salary sacrifice car scheme or company car policy, so employees already driving an EV through work can be enrolled without changing lease provider or renegotiating anything. For employees who lease privately, the same scheme still applies to their charging costs.

What HR teams notice

Feedback from HR teams running the scheme tends to cluster around three things: it is easy to explain in one sentence, it is easy to calculate a real saving for, and it does not create extra queries for HR because the app and support sit with us, not with internal teams.

Getting it in front of employees

The rollout that works best is simple: explain the saving in cash terms, point people at the calculator, and let the app do the rest. We provide the comms materials as part of onboarding, so there is no need to build this from scratch. More detail on setup is on the how it works page.

Next steps

If you want to see what this benefit would look like for your workforce, book a demo and we will talk through rollout alongside your existing EV scheme.