The government’s Behavioural Insights Team is to test new ways of stimulating payroll giving, including encouraging employees to commit to giving money when they get a future pay rise.

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) plans to work with large organisations over the next few months, trialling different ways of encouraging payroll giving.

This will include prompting people to sign up to payroll giving at the same time as they sign other pieces of office admin; and testing whether encouraging individuals to commit to giving money when they get a future pay rise, rather than on the day they receive it, will increase payment rates.

The BIT team expect to get results for these trials by the end of the year.

Alongside this, the government plans to conduct a full public consultation into payroll giving later this year, once the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme is up and running.

HM Treasury wrote to all payroll giving agencies last month announcing that the consultation would launch before Christmas to explore how payroll giving might be made more effective and efficient.

The Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) was established in July 2010 by government, initially for two years, to “to find ways of encouraging, supporting and enabling people to make better choices for themselves”.

The Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister concluded that, on the basis of the team’s success, it should continue to operate. This will mean that the team will continue its programme of work for the Cabinet Office for another two years.