Payroll giving might be a difficult mechanism, but awards  should not celebrate the below-average, says Celina Ribeiro.

It can be hard to get excited about payroll giving. There are only so many reviews, so many times one can be told about its latent potential to unleash a flood of giving before it becomes tiresome.

So an awards incentive scheme recognising employers who use payroll giving, as has been in place for a number of years now, is indeed a good thing. The annual National Payroll Giving Excellence Awards were, with some delay, funded again by the Cabinet Office earlier this year. They are open to any organisation which holds a Quality Mark Award, which ranges from bronze to platinum. Platinum, recently introduced, requires that an employer has 20 per cent of employees signed up to payroll giving – quite a feat indeed. However, an organisation can receive the apparent honour of a ‘bronze’ award for having just 1 per cent of its staff sign up to payroll giving. The national average is 6 per cent. Can a scheme which rewards below-par performance really be an incentive to anything? What, exactly, is ‘excellent’ about performing so far below the bemoaned low national average?

It typifies the general attitude towards payroll giving as one of high ambitions and low expectations.

The Economic Secretary to Treasury Sajid Javid may have this week intimated that the government is considering “radical changes” to the system, but no one who listened to him at the Institute of Fundraising’s Payroll Giving Conference really, truly believed that radical change is on the cards. Like it or not, the system we’ve got is probably the system that we’ll be – in large part – dealing with in future.

The solution to poor performance should not be to lower the standards for excellence. The awards scheme should recognise that payroll giving is sparsely supported and create awards that are both achievable and aspirational.

I was speaking to a senior figure in the payroll-giving world this week who said at least the 1 per cent award acted as an incentive for companies to strive for more and better, which is no doubt true. But the lowest award should not be set so far below the average. Let’s not patronise employers nor the scheme. Surely, as a sector, sights can be set a little higher – even with the manifold quirks of payroll giving.

This isn’t a primary-school netball team. There should be no prizes just for turning up.