Sustainable employee benefits beyond cycle to work

Cycle to work has been the go-to sustainable benefit for two decades. It is cheap to run, employees like it, and it ticks an ESG box. But it only ever served the fraction of the workforce who can commute by bike, and it does nothing for the growing number of employees driving an electric car to work, to client sites, or on the school run.

If your benefits package still stops at bikes, it is worth asking who it is actually reaching, and what is missing for everyone else.

Cycle to work's limits

Cycle to work works well for a specific group: employees who live close enough to cycle, are physically able to, and have somewhere secure to store a bike. That is a meaningful slice of the workforce, but it excludes people with longer commutes, caring responsibilities that need a car, mobility constraints, or jobs that require driving.

None of that makes cycle to work a bad benefit. It just means it is not, on its own, a sustainability benefit for the whole business. As EV adoption grows, driven by company car tax incentives and salary sacrifice car schemes, a growing share of your employees are already driving electric, or want to.

The gap: charging costs are not covered by anything

Most employers who run an EV salary sacrifice car scheme have solved the biggest cost, the car itself. What they have not solved is the ongoing cost of charging it, which is a real, recurring expense that employees currently pay from taxed income.

This is where EV charging salary sacrifice fits. It does the same job for charging costs that cycle to work does for a bike, and that the car scheme does for the lease: it lets employees pay from gross salary instead of net pay.

• Employees save 20 to 50% on charging costs, depending on tax band
• It works for charging at home, at work, and across 76,000+ public chargers
• It bolts on to any existing EV salary sacrifice or company car scheme, with no need to change providers

Why it belongs in a sustainable benefits strategy

A sustainable benefits package should reduce the cost and friction of low-carbon choices, not just the purchase decision. Cycle to work reduces the cost of buying a bike. EV salary sacrifice car schemes reduce the cost of driving electric instead of petrol. Charging salary sacrifice reduces the cost of actually running that electric car day to day, which is the part employees live with for years after the initial decision.

It also addresses something cycle to work cannot: equity. Roughly nine million UK households have no off-street parking, meaning they cannot charge cheaply at home and rely on public charging, which is often several times the cost of a home rate. A benefit that only rewards employees with a driveway is not a fair benefit. The Charge Scheme is built to work identically whether an employee charges at home or entirely on public infrastructure.

What a fuller green benefits stack looks like

Benefit	Covers	Who it reaches
Cycle to work	Bike purchase	Short commutes, able to cycle
EV salary sacrifice (car)	Vehicle lease cost	Employees choosing an EV
Charging salary sacrifice	Ongoing charging cost	Any EV driver, home or public

Put together, that is a benefits strategy that supports employees at every stage of switching to and running an electric car, not just the initial purchase.

Adding it without adding complexity

The Charge Scheme is designed to sit alongside what you already run. There is no need to renegotiate your car scheme or switch providers. HR confirms eligibility, payroll adds one deduction line, and we handle employee onboarding and support. More on how it fits into a benefits programme is on our HR teams page.

Next steps

If you want to see how charging salary sacrifice would sit alongside your existing benefits, book a demo and we will talk through fit with your current scheme.