7 Tips to Encourage Your Employees to Ride Bikes to Work
Bike riding is fun and healthy. Unfortunately, this notion only lies with the avid bikers who may belong to professional bike sports or a school of bike enthusiasts in different parts of the country. If employees were encouraged to ride bikes to work, it could make a drastic difference to their health.
However, with the growing need for maintaining fitness, hygiene, and safety, the need for bike riding to workplaces has also become a burning question nowadays.
Hence, many employers are wondering how to encourage their employees to ride bikes to work and back home.
In this article, we’re going to discuss seven practical tips on how you can motivate your employees and workers to use the two-wheelers as their daily commute.
1. Implement Bonus System for E-Bike
It may not be viable to force your employees and workers into buying a bike.
However, having a company fund to reward your employees for purchasing electric bikes will be a brilliant idea. Here, you’re financially backing up your employee instead of putting them through extra expenses.
Remember, you’re not only encouraging them to ride bikes to work, but helping them in saving the environment from carbon emissions.
Besides, electric bikes aren’t fully automated, but rather a battery-driven support to gear up the manual pedaling of the biker. Hence, it’s also ensuring their fitness while covering the workplace distances almost effortlessly.
This bonus system is nothing new because a few governmental grants and loans are already there to encourage people to buy electric bikes to maintain a healthy ecosystem.
If you can adopt this system into your organization, your employees will be more confident in purchasing and riding e-bikes.
2. Allowance for Biking Mileage
If you’re eager to inspire your employees to ride bikes, an encouragement allowance will be a very practical measure to put that idea in place. This works as a financial benefit for both parties: employees and employers.
The encouragement or mileage allowance is financial support to the employees from the company for their annual transport expenses. For instance, each employee will receive twenty pence for up to ten thousand miles of bike ride and above.
The best part of the allowance is that it’s exempt from income tax which works in favor of both the employer and the employee. This system is also known as the ‘sustainable mobility package’ which is implemented countrywide.
If your organization hasn’t adopted this system yet, take the necessary measures to motivate your employees to ride bikes.
3. Facilitate Company Bikes
Offering your employees company bikes instead of cars or buses can implement the ‘employee bike riding’ initiative effectively. After all, office facilities for your commuter employees should include bikes.
Although it may appear to your employees as an enforced system, however, you must make them realize the importance of environmental safety.
It’s worldwide recognized how carbon emission is having a negative impact on nature, which, in turn, is affecting our health badly.
If the office-goers realize how significant it is to have good health to maintain their jobs and family responsibilities, they’ll mostly opt for regular or electric bikes to commute to their workplaces and homes.
If you’re successful in persuading them to contribute and participate in saving the world, they’ll happily accept the idea of riding the company bikes to work daily.
4. Educate on Road Safety
It’s a good practice to educate your employees and workers on road safety more often. Both private and public transports are prone to accidents where people get severely injured and vehicles damaged.
A safer alternative can be cycling which reduces the risk of accidents significantly unless one of your employees is a bike adventure junkie.
You must emphasize on the importance of riding along the bike-lanes and not crossing the line to avoid any possible collision with other vehicles, or pedastrians.
Since there are accessible on-road cycle-lanes available, the possibility of accidents and injuries can be evaded to a great extent if the bikers follow the rules properly while riding to work.
5. Hold Interactive Workshop
It’s important to be respectful to your employees opinions and feedbacks after declaring any new rules or cultures within the organization. A sudden change in the regular work procedures, including dress-code, communication, transportation, etc., may instigate some sort of opinions, suggestions, or even objections.
But completely overlooking such feedback from the employees often leads to conflicts and low productivity. The same can happen if you just enforce cycling habits on them without paying attention to their response.
It’s natural that many employees do not have the physical fitness level or stamina to ride a bicycle to the workplace and back home every day. Plus, one cannot expect everyone in the workplace to feel comfortable riding a bike.
The most professional and efficient way to deal with this situation is to hold interactive workshops on a half-yearly or annual basis. You may consider bringing bike experts who can relate to their first-hand experience to motivate the employees to ride bikes.
It will also persuade your employees to help you run an environmentally friendly business.
Moreover, arranging small bike trips as a part of the workshop may also induce the acceptance and confidence about riding bikes in employees and workers.
6. Integrate Parking Management App
Adapting to advanced tech facilities in association with bike riding can change the appearance of your business compound.
For instance, if you purchase the latest parking management apps to integrate parking policy and space management, your employees will be easily parking their rides.
Having a guaranteed place for parking bikes will encourage your employees to ride bikes to the workplace. Besides, designated parking spots will breed a sense of contentment and responsibility for the office property.
All you have to do is ensure specific and clear parking policies that are accessible by the employees who ride to work.
7. Arrange Bike Events for Motivation
Apart from annual office festivals and tours, you may consider arranging bike events where the willing employees will participate in bike races or short trips.
There may be lucrative prizes for the winners and runners ups to motivate more employees to take part in this. Make sure you emphasize the bike even as a part of your official policy as well as environmental and physical care.
But don’t make any hard and fast rules, so the recreational essence of the whole event is taken off.
Otherwise, the people who took part in the event will be put off easily. And your main objective to motivate them into cycling will be compromised.
Final Note
No matter how beneficial bike riding is, convincing the adults into this habit is a tough job. Especially, if your employees are accustomed to automobile vehicles, it’s almost impossible sometimes.
But if you know how to encourage your employees to ride bikes to work in efficient manners, things may start looking up. That’s why the seven practical tips we’ve shared above will play a vital role in this process.
However, it goes without saying that you have to waive the employees who are aged or suffering from any critical physical condition.