Author: Thomas Stokell

The Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge went very well and exceeded even our expectations of what a Workplace Cycle Challenge could achieve.

Topline Outcomes:

• 38 Organisations took part
• 250 departments within these organisations registered
• 855 people participated

Participants:

• 161 participants hadn’t ridden a bike in over a year
• 110 – have cycled ‘maybe once or twice’ in the last year
• 122 – cycle about once a month
• 96 – cycle roughly once a week
• 135 – cycle 2-3 days a week
• 218 – cycled 4+ days a week

383 people were cycling only once a month or less before the Challenge.  This group of people is an ideal target audience who we’ve now got a relationship with and who we can now assist and encourage to cycle more often in future.

Two Week Follow-up Survey

We sent 5 different surveys out to 5 different groups of participants. This is so we could ask specific questions that were relevant to each target group, e.g. people new to cycling.

Responses from people who hadn’t cycled in over a year

1) Thinking ahead to next three months, will you be riding your bike:-

Definitely more than I did before the Challenge    52%

 

More than I did before the Challenge                       31%

 

About the same as I did before the Challenge        7%

 

Less than I did before the Challenge                        1%

 

Definitely less than I did before the Challenge       2%

 

I don’t know                                                                 6%

83% of people who hadn’t ridden a bike in over a year now intend to cycle more often after taking part in the Workplace Cycle Challenge.  Only 3 people said they’d cycle less (one said because they don’t own a bike, and the other two because of the weather!).

5) How likely is it that you would take part in the Challenge again if it was repeated?

Very likely           75%

 

Quite likely          25%

 

Quite unlikely      0%

 

Very unlikely        0%

100% of people who hadn’t cycled in over a year would take part in the Challenge again.  This shows that people did have a positive cycling experience when they took part in the Challenge.

4 Month Follow-up Survey

We’ll be doing another short survey of Participants in October to find out if people have been cycling more often after taking part in the Challenge.

Thanks to the CTC

The CTC funded the Swindon Challenge, so a big thanks to them for seeing the potential this programme has to change behaviour and get more people cycling.

Want a Summary Report?

If you’d like a summary report giving more details and stats from the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge then send Thomas an email and he’ll email a report to you: thomas@lovetoride.org

This week we’ve received even more positive feedback from participants of the Swindon Cycle Challenge.

Hi Tom,


Thanks for organising a great challenge! We usually run bike week events but your local challenge proved a much better way to get people onto bikes. I’m really keen to promote cycling as a way of getting around so will be watching your blog for furthe developments.

I’ve been quite entertained by it all actually. I offered my road bike to people to have a go, and some of the expressions and comments you get from people when they see the 25mm, slick tyres are quite fun. But generally it’s got people talking about cycling a LOT here, and 4 new people had a go, which is great!

Ross

——

Up until the challenge I hadn’t ridden a bike for well over a year.

I did actually enjoy the bike ride – its funny how easily you forget how much pleasure it brings

I am now glad to say that I have bought a bike and am planning on using it a lot more.

Regards,

Jackie

——

Tom

This was a great thing to do – and was exceptionally well done!

Many, many thanks!

Mark (keen cyclist-commuter)

——

I’m so pleased to have taken part in this challenge. I live in Chippenham, and for months have been wondering ‘could I, could I possibly…’ and the challenge promted me to give it a go. Of course, having done the journey I realised that it really is no trouble at all – in fact it’s a pleasure! Due to time constraints however, I can only realistically do it once a week (possibly twice), in the summer. But am now considering getting the train to Swindon, & then to cycle up to Halcrow. I do prefer to cycle the complete route though – it’s just easier to get on the bike and ride, isn’t it? And who knows, maybe cycling is the winter, in the dark won’t be so bad after all.

I’ve also taken advantage of the cycle scheme to order myself a super new road bike, and look forward to that arriving.

Anyway, the bug has well and truly bitten!

Best wishes, and thanks,

Jo

——

Thanks. I did actually enjoy it (and have continued!). I was surprised at how good the cycle tracks in our local area are.

Adie

——

Hi Thomas,
Looks like the Challenge was a great success for you, so well done for
that. You did a great job organising it all, & the website was really
good.

We really enjoyed taking part, so hopefully there’ll be another one
at some point that we can be part of. The bike racks downstairs were
nearly full up, which was a great sign that lots of people were giving
cycling a go.

I’ll keep logging my mile on the website – nice to see the mileage building up.

Have a good weekend!
Cheers
Joy

Once again these types of comments really help to add colour to the numbers behind the Challenge which demonstrate statistically that this programme gets more people cycling.

Read more comments people have made about the Challenge in an earlier post.

We’ve managed to get some pretty good media coverage in Swindon to promote the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge.

Radio

Brunel FM covered us three times a day over the two weeks of the Challenge at 8:40am, 12:40pm and 5:40pm. They gave coverage such as this brief radio update.

They have also done four interviews with us so far including this radio interview that went to air the day after the Challenge:

So how did we get this pretty sweet deal?

1. Add value to their business – We were able to offer them something new and Swindon specific to talk about which helps keep their radio shows fresh, interesting and relevant to their audience. The Swindon Challenged involved 38 organisations which collectively employ over 25,000 people in Swindon. We informally gave them exclusivity for radio coverage of the Challenge. We put their logo on the website. We encouraged Challenge participants to tune in to Brunel FM and listen to updates on how the Challenge is going.
2. Make it easy – We emailed them updates that they could easily read out on air. We gave them human interest stories.

Newspaper

Similar lessons can be learned when working with newspapers. We’ve had three articles in the Swindon Advertiser (the main local paper in Swindon) including this article.

1. Add value to their business – The Challenge is a relevant story to many of their readers (17% of Swindon’s population was employed by the 38 organisations involved)
2. We wrote good media releases with assistance from the CTC that could easily be turned into good newspaper articles.
3. We took interesting photos and sent these to the paper (rather than them having to send a photographer out).  Interesting photos help make the paper more interesting to readers.

Newspapers often have a policy of not publishing articles based on press releases unless you spend some money with them on advertising space. So the CTC did purchase an advert space to promote the Challenge on and in return the paper wrote an article on the Challenge.

That might seem a little greedy of newspapers to operate like that, but the ad didn’t cost a great deal and they’ve continued to publish all our subsequent press releases without us needing to purchase any further ad space.

In Summary

Keep in mind that it’s an exchange when working with the media. They can help add value to your business if you can help add value to theirs.

Below is some of the feedback we’ve received from participants who took part in the Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge:

I love reading this type of feedback. Evaluations and statistics can give you the hard facts to say that a programme works, but it’s these kind of comments that bring this data, and the Challenge itself, to life.

Read more feedback here

The Swindon Workplace Cycle Challenge is a fun, free competition designed to get more people cycling.

Organisations and departments in Swindon UK will compete to see who can get the most staff to hop on a bike and give cycling a go.

People only need to cycle for at least 10 minutes or 1 mile for their participation to count. They can ride wherever they feel comfortable, at any point over the two week Challenge period (Monday 14 July to Sunday 27 July 2008).

It’s all about encouraging people to experience for themselves how much fun cycling can be and to experience what it’s actually like to ride a bike (as opposed to what they perceive it’s like to ride a bike).

The Challenge is a fun way of getting an existing network of cyclists to encourage their colleagues to hop on a bike and have some fun cycling as part of the Challenge. This is a great first step to then encouraging these people to start cycling.

This workplace cycle challenge is a behavioural change programme which is effective at encouraging more people to take up cycling. It is also proven to encourage people who cycle recreationally to start cycling for transport purposes.

The Challenge is being funded by the CTC – The UK’s national cyclists’ organisation.  The Challenge is one of the CTC’s Cycling Champions projects which has been funded by Big Lottery.

See the Swindon Cycle Challenge website for more details on the Challenge.

It’s going to do great things for cycling in Swindon.