With supermarket shelves already brimming with festive items in August, it's clearly never too early to start thinking about Christmas. 

This is particularly true when you're an employer looking to lend a financial helping hand to your employees.

Although the holiday season is a time of joy and celebration, it can also be a difficult time for many people as they try to control costs and balance their spending limit during a period of financial stress. And here are a couple of reasons why Christmas may be scaled back this year:

• ● Over 50% of Brits are worried about being able to afford Christmas this year 
• ● One in four expect to buy fewer presents due to rising costs and financial burdens

Our research found that although employees feel that their employers have a responsibility to help them through the cost of living crisis, just 5% are doing enough to support their financial wellbeing.

As an employer, you have the power to make a positive impact on your employees' lives. This is important as we know economic anxiety is affecting UK employees' performance at work and companies that go the extra mile to help employees get more out of their salary this Christmas will benefit from an increase to employee morale and employee retention. 

So, here is our guide to how to alleviate some of the financial pressure your employees may be facing this Christmas and beyond. 

Focus on employee benefits

It's not just employees who are affected by rising energy and living costs. Many businesses are also struggling to adjust to the current financial hardships. That's why easing the financial pressure by giving employees annual holiday bonuses, annual salary increases, or year-end bonuses may not be an option for every business.

Luckily, there is another option that 65% of employees agree should be part of their employee compensation package to help them manage financial issues: Employee benefits.

Our research into the key employee benefits trends found that one of the most popular employee benefits for supporting staff is salary sacrifice schemes.

Introduce salary sacrifice schemes

When you're looking to make your employees' salaries go further at Christmas (or any time), you can't beat salary sacrifice schemes.

By providing tax breaks on products and services that matter to employees, salary sacrifice schemes involve exchanging part of their salary for a non-cash benefit. As the employee pays less in National Insurance contributions and income tax, their salary is stretched further.

For that reason, adding salary sacrifice schemes to your comprehensive benefits package will help to ensure you are a desirable employer of choice to current and future employees.