Introduction to the employers toolkit
Case studies
Find out how other businesses have made cycling a bigger part of office life – and how they’ve reaped the benefits.
Keir Bovis, Bicycle User Group Coordinator, Met Office
The Met Office relocated from Bracknell to Exeter in 2003, and at the same time, developed a new a travel plan to manage how employees were to travel to work. One of the objectives that arose was to facilitate and encourage people to cycle as much as possible, and luckily our new building already had some features in place that supported this – including cycle shelters, shower rooms and secure lockers.
At this time, there were already a core of people who were engaged with cycling; naturally, people here are very interested in climate change issues, but also we have found that many people do it for the health and social aspects too.
I help run MOBUG (the Met Office Bicycle User Group) with five other people. We meet about two to three times a year and help to coordinate a monthly bike ride where we invite other cyclists from local companies along. It’s a fun way of getting to know people who work in the same area as you. We’re sited close to other local employers such as Devon and Cornwall Constabulary and South West Water and we try to include as many people as possible on monthly group rides from these companies. The rides alternate between long and short rides each month so that we can open rides up to as many people as possible.
We maintain a social cycling emailing list of approximately fifty people and arrange regular social cycle rides at lunch times or after work. It’s a nice way of bringing people from different departments together.
The more people cycle socially the more they’re likely to cycle to work – about 10 – 12 % of our 1200 staff at our Exeter HQ now regularly commute every day throughout the year, with more in the summer. We reach our peak in Bike Week in June, which we really make a big effort for every year.
As part of MOBUG we work with the building services team to push for changes to infrastructure, for example we recently converted a smoking shelter into another bike shelter. We also represent the Met Office at the Exeter Cycle Forum which is facilitated by Cycle Exeter; there we can contribute to local cycling developments and have a say on where money should be directed to and how best to get more people cycling.
Involvement in the Cycle Forum by MOBUG has indirectly benefited many Met Office staff that live in Exeter and commute to the outskirts where our offices are located. We’ve been able to have input in the planning of new cycle routes out to the wider Exeter area which has really benefitted our staff. We also successfully campaigned for a new safe crossing to be installed near us. We are lucky Exeter has been designated a Cycling demonstration town.
The Cycle Forum also provides us with information, materials and easy ways to communicate the benefits to cycling to our employees, and is a great place to talk about how to most effectively bring about positive change and make our travel plan a success.
Climate change is very important to the Met Office, as is employee health, and the Met Office has totally recognised the importance of cycling for both.
Louise Rowe, Green Travel Manager – EDF Energy
We’re really keen to promote cycling at EDF Energy as we’re very committed to staff wellbeing and health – cycling is a really way of helping people keep fit and reducing absenteeism, as well as a safe, cheap and quick way of getting to work. It’s also a really easy way to reduce our organisational carbon footprint.
On their first day at EDF Energy, new employees are given a presentation on the benefits of cycling and given cycle maps for the area so that they can think about how to arrive by bike. We’ve also invested in a new bike shelter, and there are shower and parking facilities on site as well as free bike covers available for the rain and high-visibility vests for staff. We’ve set up a discount scheme with a local bike shop, and hope to arrange some demos for staff soon on bicycle maintenance.
Here at the Exeter site we’re the forerunners in terms of our travel plan, and we act in an advisory role to the rest of the company. We hope to have signed up to Cycle Scheme by the end of the year, which will mean getting it implemented throughout the country – this a really important step for us in making EDF Energy cycle-friendly, and we’re excited to be the ones pushing for such a positive company-wide change.
We still feel like we’ve got a way to go before we get where we want to be with our promoting cycling, but we’re certainly getting there – we plan on using Cycle Exeter’s expertise and resources to bring in a number of new pro-cycling measures in the near future, like becoming involved in the Exeter cycle forum and setting up a BUG group – there seems to be lots of easy ways to get involved.
Pete Kempton – Science teacher and Cycling Enrichment Coordinator, Exeter College
“Exeter College has approximately 14,000 full and part time students, each of whom has the opportunity to participate in an enrichment programme – which is a chunk of time taken out often on a Wednesday afternoon to take part in extra curricular activities. I look after the cycling club during this time on top of my usual teaching.
Activities I’ve arranged include a couple of trips to the velodrome, which were really popular, and we plan to do more. I’ve also run workshops on how to repair your bike with a local bike shop, and taken students on simple cycle trails and some longer road rides. It’s really helped to engage them and encourage more of them to take up cycling and bring their friends along the next time.
We went to a mountain bike taster session at Haldon Freeride at the beginning of the year. Cycle Exeter provided the coaches for this and everyone had a great time – we’re going back soon. Cycle Exeter also helped to support the Exeter Schools Mountain Bike Project which provides six free mountain bike sessions per school in Exeter and twenty free bikes to use, so it’s really accessible. Not only is it a healthy activity; it’s also exciting and a great thing for the students to do in their spare time – quite different to most other activities that are available to them. Now, I’m taking a mountain bike leader’s course with a few others so I can take the students myself – it’s good fun!
We promote cycling to our 900 – strong staff via our website with information about cycling. It’s been quite successful in encouraging people and we plan on doing more like putting some suggested local routes up on the site. We’ve also got a Bicycle User Group (BUG) where we’ve started up the Cycle to Work scheme, planned a few sociable cycle rides, and installed some cycling parking funded by Cycle Exeter.
We’re also planning on involving staff in cycling from the very beginning by making it part of their induction to learn about how to get to work on a bike and help them with training if they need it.
The more people we can encourage to cycle the better. It’s a great way to help students save money, and there are such fantastic cycle routes in Exeter that it’s safe and easy for students to start cycling to college.
Jude Fleming, also member of the BUG group, agrees: “It’s absolutely important to promote cycling – there’s very little parking around here and it’s expensive to park in city centre, so it’s convenient. Also cycling keeps everyone healthy and reduces absenteeism amongst staff and students.”
Bob Adams, Car Parking and Facilities Manager – Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust
“The Trust is proactive in promoting a healthy lifestyle amongst staff and cycling is an easy way of helping them keep fit and in good shape.
We’ve implemented a wide range of initiatives since 2001; belonging to the Exeter Cycle Forum has given us lots of ideas and help with implementing all of the measures that we’ve taken to encourage cycling. It’s crucial to have representatives from the health community in the forum.
The changes we have made include infrastructure improvements such as providing additional cycle hoops close to building entrances and secure cycle storage with carded entry. These were bought about by the staff bicycle user group we set up; we also became a member of Cycle Scheme. For a number of years we have looked at encouraging alternatives to car use which is also important due to a lack of parking spaces.
To encourage our staff to ride bikes instead of drive from one site to another we pay mileage for cyclists, and have set up Bike Buddies to travel with new cyclists until they become confident. We’ve also organised Dr Bike and cycle security marking sessions, and put on roadshows promoting the cycle scheme, cycle security and advice on cycling within Exeter, as well as the health benefits of cycling. Negotiating the purchase of ‘Solid Secure’ D-locks at a heavily reduced price means staff can feel secure about bringing their bikes to work.
As a result, cycling has been steadily increasing for the past few years, and the great thing is that it has it hasn’t cost much apart from some staff time to get this all in place. A lot of the infrastructure changes have been match funded by Cycle Exeter. We’ve communicated our successes for free via pay slips, global emails, our trust magazine and intranet site and onsite road shows, and people have been able to see the benefits for their health and also their finances.
We’ll continue to promote cycling and we hope that with so much help available and infrastructure in place the more people who take up cycling the more other people will follow. As a health organisation, it’s a priority for us to work in a way that’s aligned with our purpose and make sure that our staff are encouraged to cycle as much as possible – for their health and also so that the hospital and the people who work here can set a good example for the rest of the community.“
