Make sure your workplace is geared up for Bike Week 100

Cycling UK’s flagship event Bike Week is less than two weeks away. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the UK’s biggest cycling awareness week celebrating the power of active travel.

Bike Week 100 has a special focus on workplace cycling, so we want to encourage as many workplaces as possible to support their staff to ride during the week. But how can your workplace get involved and how do you ensure it’s ready? Read on to find out everything you need to know to make sure the week is a success.

Organise a ride

There’s no better way to inspire your staff to try cycling than by organising a group ride. Your workforce probably includes some seasoned cyclists already. Undoubtedly, though, there are also people who have been curious to try cycling, either to commute or for leisure, but have been put off by safety concerns and haven’t had the confidence to strike out on their own.

A group ride offers support that can help beginners feel inspired to make cycling a regular habit. What’s more, the wellbeing benefits from regular activity aren’t the only way a workplace can benefit from more staff cycling. Riding together as a group can also be a fantastic team-building activity, boosting morale among employees.

Sign up for free insurance

If you’re planning on organising a group ride, don’t forget that by registering your event with Cycling UK, you can get free event insurance. If you’re planning on running an event with more than 500 participants, please email us instead.

Plan a route

It’s important that you plan a route in advance and know what level it’s suitable for, and even better if you can ride it just before the event to check what condition it’s in. You’ll need to think about distance, climbing and duration – there are plenty of route planning apps to help out there, and you can also check out Cycling UK’s journey planner.

Our handy video tells you everything you need to know when planning your route. If you’ve had a lot of people interested in participating, you may want to think about planning a couple of rides to suit different levels of ability.

Shout about Bike Week to staff and stakeholders

Don’t forget to tell people about your event! Make sure you send reminders to staff – but you can also benefit from letting your audience know you’ve taken part, to communicate that you put staff wellbeing and the environment first.

Cycling UK has a suite of promotional materials to help get the message out. It includes social media templates and example posts, a poster and editable certificates to give to those who participate.

Remind staff to check their bikes work

Take on a Bike Week 100 challenge

Cycling UK has set a series of active challenges as part of Bike Week 100. With options available for different skill and fitness levels, anyone can take one on. You can choose to either burn 100 calories by bike, save £100 by bike, or cover 100 miles by bike over the course of the week.

And if the last one seems like too much of a challenge to fit into a working week, or if your staff don’t need to commute, you can also complete it on a turbo trainer or split it between a group of riders.

Offer a bike breakfast

For those that are not able to join a group ride, you can still encourage staff to do their usual commute on a bike. Offering a bike breakfast is a great way to reward anyone who wants to trial whether cycle commuting is for them.

Reward participants

Speaking of rewards, there’s nothing like fun prizes to inspire people to get involved. You could simply reward anyone for joining a ride or cycling to work, using the editable certificates in our promotional toolkit.

If you want to add an element of challenge that’s inclusive and not focused on fitness, why not consider a photo competition? The top prize could go to the best or funniest cycling photo of the week.

Offer to be a bike buddy

Do you know a colleague who’s keen to try cycle commuting but hasn’t had the confidence to go it alone? More experienced cyclists could offer to be a colleague’s bike buddy for a day or the whole week.

Riding to work the first time can seem intimidating, and having support from someone more experienced can make all the difference to inspire someone new or returning to cycling.

Take advantage of our exclusive partner offers

Cycling UK has a special suite of partner offers, available for one week only starting 5 June. Yellow Jersey is offering one week’s free cycle insurance for anyone taking part in Bike Week this year.

We also have a selection of discounts from Halfords, Stolen Goat, Raleigh, Hurrecane, CityBrix and Carradice.

Take part in Making cycling e-asier events

If your workplace or employees are based in Manchester, Sheffield, Leicester or Luton and Dunstable, Cycling UK’s national e-cycles programme Making cycling e-asier is offering free skills and confidence sessions that anyone can sign up for.

Whether you’re a keen cyclist, or you haven’t cycled in a while, these one-hour sessions will help you get to grips with e-cycling in no time.

Our team will provide you with an e-cycle; helmets aren’t necessary but we can provide one if you want – or you can bring your own.

Supporting staff to cycle on an ongoing basis can provide businesses with lots of benefits. Becoming a Cycle Friendly Employer is the best way to make sure you take full advantage of them. It’s easy to find out if you already qualify by completing Cycling UK’s free self-assessment.