Salary sacrifice

I'm working with a team at the moment which provides a range of services associated with salary sacrifice programmes. Salary sacrifice involves deductions made from an employee's monthly pay which are hypothecated for a specific purpose and are free from income tax and national insurance. It's an interesting idea as a business:

• it provides a win-win for everyone (employees [who can make savings against specific, government approved purchases] and employers [who make a net overall saving on their payroll costs even after the management fees charged by the service company]
  
• after selling in the initial programme, the service company can use its relationship with the employer to offer additional programmes so there are great opportunities to deepen the relationships within the existing customer base
• it's fast growing - the number of approved programmes is increasing all the time and as more and more employees find out about the savings they can make, they are pressing their employers to set up their own programmes which drives demand for the service companies' expertise
• almost best of all - the group of employees who stand to benefit most from this are higher rate tax payers - the group that the employer least wants to lose, so employers tend to respond relatively quickly once the idea takes hold