How employers can go up a gear to boost commuting by pedal power

Ten­nis ace Cameron Nor­rie made head­lines at Wim­ble­don this sum­mer for more than reach­ing the Grand Slam’s semi-finals. Papped cycling to the tour­na­ment, rack­et slung on his back, he told the press mat­ter-of-fact­ly he does not own a car and bikes to prac­tice almost every day.

In many ways, Nor­rie is bang on trend. Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the gov­ern­ment hailed a British “active trav­el Renais­sance” as qui­et roads and pub­lic trans­port qualms boost­ed cycling rates by 46%. But he is still in a tiny minor­i­ty of Britons who com­mute by bike.

A recent Ipsos sur­vey found just 5% of the UK pop­u­la­tion cycle to work or school. While this is almost dou­ble the 2.8% record­ed in the 2011 cen­sus, it’s still far behind Ger­many, Swe­den and the world-lead­ing 30% in the Nether­lands.

Why does this mat­ter? It’s long been known that cycling to work ben­e­fits employ­ers and work­ers alike. Accord­ing to the Euro­pean Cycle Fed­er­a­tion, a com­muter who switch­es from car to bike for an 8km com­mute saves 750kg of car­bon emis­sions annu­al­ly. For larg­er organ­i­sa­tions, this could add up to sig­nif­i­cant cuts in Scope Three emis­sions (indi­rect emis­sions from third par­ties). Mean­while, stud­ies have linked cycling to work with a 41% low­er risk of pre­ma­ture death and a 45% reduc­tion in can­cer risk, while reg­u­lar exer­cise can help ward off depres­sion.

The past two years have added impe­tus. Rus­sell Stephens, head of com­mer­cial at Cycling UK, says there has been a surge of inter­est in its work­place cycling schemes since 2020.

“Going back to the start of the pan­dem­ic, busi­ness­es want­ed to make prac­ti­cal changes, based on the fact that it didn’t feel safe to trav­el into cities and towns dur­ing the lock­down,” he says. “Now we’re see­ing a shift towards work­places try­ing to help staff with the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis.” Accord­ing to new research from Black­hawk Net­work, com­muters can save an aver­age of £750 a year by switch­ing to cycling, ris­ing to £1,400 in Greater Lon­don.

The charity’s Cycle Friend­ly Employ­er accred­i­ta­tion recog­nis­es busi­ness­es that sup­port bik­ing to work. Among the changes it sug­gests are installing lock­ers, show­ers and secure cycle stor­age, along with pro­vid­ing lia­bil­i­ty insur­ance and host­ing bike main­te­nance ses­sions. The government’s Cycle to Work scheme is par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar. It allows PAYE employ­ees to spread the cost of bicy­cle equip­ment through a tax-free salary sac­ri­fice and more than 1.6 mil­lion peo­ple at 40,000 employ­ers have signed up for it.

Creating a cycling culture

But these inter­ven­tions count for lit­tle with­out cul­ture change. Nick Cham­ber­lain, pol­i­cy man­ag­er at British Cycling, says, for exam­ple, that many believe cycling to work means heavy, sweat­ing effort. This often isn’t true for typ­i­cal short com­mutes – so busi­ness­es should reflect this in their mes­sag­ing and imagery.

“Cycling to work doesn’t have to be a sporty thing. You don’t have to be a fit­ness fanat­ic,” he says. “Tak­en steadi­ly, it’s no dif­fer­ent to a brisk walk, but the per­cep­tion is often very dif­fer­ent.”

One busi­ness putting this into prac­tice with great suc­cess is HSBC UK, a for­mer part­ner of British Cycling.

“We’ve tried to cul­ti­vate an envi­ron­ment where any­one can be a cyclist, no mat­ter what you wear, or no mat­ter what bike you have, and also no mat­ter how far you want to go,” says Thomas Col­lier, a branch net­work man­ag­er in Inver­ness. “What’s key is keep­ing it sim­ple and not pre­scrib­ing to peo­ple.”

Col­lier, a life­long bike enthu­si­ast, is one of the bank’s 120 Get Active cham­pi­ons around the coun­try, who organ­ise group rides both in-per­son and vir­tu­al­ly and share col­leagues’ suc­cess sto­ries. To date, 12,000 employ­ees, includ­ing CEO Ian Stu­art, have reg­is­tered on HSBC UK’s Get Active Hub app, log­ging more than 2.1 mil­lion cycling miles.

“[The app] cre­ates a com­mu­ni­ty and sup­port area where you can go and see what oth­er peo­ple are doing, get ideas and encour­age each oth­er,” Col­lier says.

There are dif­fer­ent cycling facil­i­ties in each of HSBC’s hun­dreds of UK work­places, but “It’s the plan­ning that helps peo­ple,” he says. This includes infor­ma­tion about show­er facil­i­ties and where they can lock up their bikes.

Building resilience

Plan­ning and com­mu­ni­ca­tion have also been key for Great Ormond Street Hos­pi­tal for Chil­dren (GOSH), the first UK hos­pi­tal accred­it­ed gold sta­tus by Cycling UK. This is despite big­ger chal­lenges than most: its large cen­tral Lon­don cam­pus hosts a diverse work­force, from doc­tors to admin­is­tra­tors, all with vary­ing shift pat­terns and back­grounds.

All new employ­ees receive an infor­ma­tion pack about active trav­el, includ­ing maps of cycle-safe routes to the hos­pi­tal, infor­ma­tion on the health ben­e­fits of cycling and even the loca­tions of recent bike thefts. There’s also an email group to share tips, a bud­dy sys­tem for new cyclists and bike hire schemes that give peo­ple a chance to try out cycling before invest­ing in their own.

A recent staff sur­vey showed that 18% of respon­dents now use bikes as part of their com­mute – a huge jump from just a few years ago. Part of that was a shift from pub­lic trans­port dur­ing Covid but, although “the pan­dem­ic focused minds”, Mar­tin says the hos­pi­tal sees this as a long-term change.

“The work­force is under strain, as a lot are. So if you can offer some­thing pos­i­tive, that’s good. It is [also] about the resilience of the hos­pi­tal in terms of peo­ple being able to get in if push comes to shove,” he adds.

Since the start of the pan­dem­ic, GOSH has also worked with Cam­den Bor­ough Coun­cil to sup­port the cre­ation of safer cycling routes around the hos­pi­tal. It fol­lowed sev­er­al cyclist fatal­i­ties on near­by roads, includ­ing among its staff.

Safer cycling infrastructure

That under­lines the very real safe­ty fears many have about bikes. Busy roads that lack seg­re­gat­ed, con­tin­u­ous cycle paths can be dan­ger­ous as well as intim­i­dat­ing, and cycling is still around 28 times riski­er than dri­ving.

That’s some­thing the gov­ern­ment is push­ing to change. A new pub­lic agency, Active Trav­el Eng­land, was estab­lished this year to over­see a £2bn bud­get for safe cycling and walk­ing schemes across the coun­try.

Cham­ber­lain believes that employ­ers should make sure local author­i­ties and MPs know they want to see some of that mon­ey invest­ed in their area. “If you want the UK’s work­force to cycle, then busi­ness­es should be a crit­i­cal part of call­ing for pub­lic mon­ey to be spent dif­fer­ent­ly. We need busi­ness­es to say, ‘We need safe roads, we need good polic­ing, we need safe, high-qual­i­ty infra­struc­ture.”

Almost a decade ago sup­port from busi­ness­es such as Deloitte, Microsoft and Unilever was instru­men­tal in estab­lish­ing London’s land­mark cycle super­high­ways. As a result of this and oth­er infra­struc­ture improve­ments in the cap­i­tal, Lon­don­ers are now three times more like­ly to cycle for trav­el than the rest of the coun­try. Now, says Cham­ber­lain, “We need the same lev­el of invest­ment of polit­i­cal cap­i­tal in all the oth­er big urban cen­tres across the coun­try.”