New Zealand-based advertising and creative agency Make Collective offers its six employees a financial year-end bonus if they cycle to and from work.
The initiative, which launched in February 2018, awards employees $5 (£2.63) a day if they cycle on their commute. Employees that maintain cycling to and from work for more than half a year will receive a larger award of $10 (£5.27) a day. These awards are paid out as a bonus at the end of the year.
Make Collective introduced the new initiative in order to help motivate employees who wished to cycle to work, but who found it hard to commit long-term to this goal. In addition, the incentive scheme has been designed to continue the organisational ethos of having a positive work-life balance and a relaxed workplace environment.
Tim Chesney, director at Make Collective, said: “I’m a keen cyclist and have commuted to work for several years. The benefits of cycling are pretty well [documented] at a personal, workplace, city and global level. As someone who cycles a lot, I often hear people say that they’d love to cycle to work but find it hard to actually commit to doing it. The same went for my employees. So, I got to thinking about what would be a good incentive to get people to give it a go and the most obvious answer was cash.
“It’s hard to know what the benefits will be to the business but my gut instinct is that it will result in good outcomes for the business as a whole, from increased energy, reduced stress [and] better health. I’ve always tried to create a workplace that is relaxed and has a good work-life balance, so [the initiative is] more a continuation of that ethos.
“I had the idea last year and floated it past everyone. We had numerous discussions about what would be the best solution, how to track it and some of the details, [for example], should it be a flat rate or tied to the number of kilometres cycled? Once we had a rough agreement that we had a scheme that was fair to everyone and would also be sufficient [motivation], I then crunched the numbers and decided it was worth a go.”