There are many reasons why businesses might encourage bicycling to work like employee health and wellness or environmental wellbeing. And while I've previously discussed turning your company into an exercise culture through design, I thought it would be a good idea to tackle the bicycle element.
Provide Bike Storage
This is definitely the easiest step to creating a bicycle culture – and many companies do an awesome job giving employees safe places to store their cycles while at work. While some offer dedicated rooms for storage, others make the racks a feature of the office – which would no doubt show others that people do in fact cycle to work.
Google's London office has a large number of bicycle parking space. Apple's upcoming campus provides hundres of bicycle parking spots. F.biz offers underground bicycle parking.
And of course, Turnstone has an awesome bike rack that is able to quickly be added to any office (hint hint).
Provide Perks For Riding
Not only is Apple's new campus offering bicycle storage, they are also encouraging the behavior by offering monetary benefits. For instance, if you ride to work, the company give you a $20 subsidy that can help pay for the cost of wear and tear on your bicycle.
Provide Bicycle Maintenance
Another thought might be to give employees the tools necessary to service their bicycles at work. Spare tires, pumps, tubes, and lube are all essential to cycling that are fairly annoying to keep well-stocked at home.
Provide Work Bicycles
While there are many people that work within an adequate distance to work that can accomodate cycling, many people do not. But, that doesn't mean that can't benefit from the exercise benefits it offers.
Some companies, like AOL and Apple have shared bikes that are available to check out and use during the day. Perhaps employees can go grab lunch and bike along the way.
Provide Showers
Why? I'll let you think of it.
Lead by Example
Probably no other item on the list is more important than simply leading by example and cycling to work. By showing that you find cycling important to your employees, you will have a much easier time convincing them that they should find it important.
To provide some bicycle rack inspiration, check out some of the racks companies like Yelp, Oxigen, Disqus, David Baker Architects, Aol, Foursquare, NerdWallet, Grupo Gallegos
