How 'bout you describe the incentives you get, or expect anyone else to be receiving from their employer for showing up to work?

This. Why should an employer give you an incentive for riding your bicycle? That doesn't have much to do with anybody's job function. You might say it's because you'll be medically healthier and therefore less costly to insurance and out sick less. That's probably well accepted to some level but there would be a lot of legitimate disagreement on the extent of this benefit. But OK, lots of activity beside bicycling will do that. What about the people that work out a lot at the gym? Counting them out?

If I were your employer I'd tell you that you need to get to work somehow or another and you're not getting any help from me on that front. Your job starts when you get out of that silly outfit and start working.

In some parts of the country it's very difficult to recruit and retain good talent. I know tech companies here in the SF area poach each other all the time. Companies offer incentives for you to stay working for them instead of walking off to where they are offering a better deal. For instance playing on the previous example of gym membership, many companies have an onsite gym and allow you to work out during your work day if the schedule allows. This has multiple benefits, they keep you onsite longer, keeps you healthier and builds a team environment. The same thing goes for offering food. The food keeps you onsite longer and people bond over meals. The list of benefits available at these places is pretty amazing including prepaid legal, guaranteed ride home (cab) programs, free buses to a radius of about 75 miles, pet insurance and parties like you couldn't imagine. One party had the Black Eyed Peas, Foo Fighters, Bob Dylan and the Eagles another had Elton John and Queen Latifah. I know because I worked in the tech field for a decade. You can poo poo this all you want but these are America's most successful companies like Google, Apple, Amgen, Cisco etc etc

I worked for PPG (paint and formerly a glass company, look on your car window, you may see the logo!) a while back, and they offered incentives for exercising. I forget exactly what the incentive was, but it was pretty good! More than just $20 or something. You just had to exercise over X hours per week (which could include commuting.) And you'd get paid maybe $150 a month or so. I may be exaggerating or simply remembering incorrectly, but I know it was something I was definitely interested in, but since I was a temp worker I couldn't partake.

The $20 per month rebate is a federal program - all the employer has to do is fill out a few forms and then they give the bike commuter the check and take it as a credit on their taxes - doesn't cost anything except some administrative labor.

My company also offered us $200 just to take a health survey through our health insurance provider - company just gets statistics like how many people smoke or whatever so they can offer incentives to get healthier.

Good point. It was like that around here in the 90s. Not anymore.

I couldn't see my employer doing this.

That's sad, since the cost is low or zero, and there could even be a payoff.

I'm the boss.....I already pay you to work here....Now I have to pay you to come here too?....How bout I pay you to watch me work?...:)

I don't care how you get here,you can fly,ride a bike,crawl,skip rope.....just get here on time.

I work for a huge employer and they offer no incentivets. It's not a big deal I commute to work for personnel reasons not monetary ones but as a joke I asked my boss if I could get work time to ride to work because im saving the environment. He got real serious and said "under no cercomstances are you allowed to use work time to ride to work. Am I making myself clear"..... I replied "crystal"...... I have a great relationship with my boss and he is a great guy but this must have come up in the past and I touched a nerve. I don't even joke about bike commuting any more.

You're missing the point. Sure you're my boss today. But my future is in my hands not yours. You just paid to train me for 6 months. if you're a d*ck I'll go use that training at your competitor. I know its not this way everywhere. That's why i don't live in Green Bay Wi. I chose to live where there is opportunity and here you can totally do that.

Sorry to go off on a tangent, I don't really believe in this. Here is my crazy theory; you are likely to burn 300-400 calories on a 10 mile commute. This ends up being $3-$6 of food, (10 miles at 20-30 mpg = .5-.3 gallons= <$2.) How much fuel/energy is burned to produce/pick/sort/ship the food? Not very much, but maybe .1-.2 of a gallon? So it is cheaper to use fuel as transportation (excluding insurance/mechanical repair.) You would hope it would be more environmental friendly.

I work for a large national bank with 70,000 employees. I really need to look into possible incentives.

I think the point is different. To my mind the relevant points are:

(a) Many companies already give large incentives to motorists. Paving and maintaining parking lots and garages is not cheap, yet parking is typically free in suburbans and in cities many companies subsidize motorists' parking . Many also have programs to pay for transit. The $ amounts for bicycling are so low that subsidizing bicycle commuters would be cheaper than subsidizing drivers.

(b) The bicycle incentive does cost the company. I expect it costs more than the $240 annual payment to administer the program for an office if 1 employee (out of 400) bicycles. For transit reimbursements, the compliance audits sounded particularly rigid. (The auditors did not allow employees to choose different monthly reimbursements in different months. Monthly transit for 2-3 months in the summer and parking 2-3 days each month during winter months with bad weather seemed logical to me, but was not permitted.)

(c) The rules are driven by government (IRS, city) regulations more than company preferences. The IRS permitted employers to reimburse parking but strictly prohibited transit reimbursement for many years. Some cities require transit reimbursement, while others require large parking lots for office buildings. These programs will be offered if they are required or popular; where I've lived bicycle commuting is neither.

Economically, I don't see subsidizing bicycling any differently than subsidizing driving; in fact it could be cheaper for the company. However, if bicycle subsidies are not required, companies will spend their time on benefits with broader appeal.

Yeah, that's a crazy theory. I think 10 miles in a car is more like $5 when you consider other costs. A car costs a lot more than the cost of the fuel you put in it. And I don't count the cost of the calories burned like that either. I like to eat. I'll eat nearly as much if I don't ride my bicycle. I'll just be heavier doing it.

And there's other costs to consider as well. Like the cost of being bored out of your mind stuck in rush hour traffic every day, your medical care when you have problems that result from a sedate lifestyle, the cost to our society of the pollution from automobile exhausts, the reduced quality of life in a car-centric infrastructure to name a few.

You´re right it is off topic, wrong about the rest, another thread perhaps.

I actually thought this post was about selling advertising space on your clothing or on the bicycle, as bike commuters (at least in my area) are still novel enough to attract scores of stares on the way to and from work!

my employer says that a single parking space costs them $30k, and I wonder if there are costs they didn't consider when they came up with that number. They do have incentives to ride the bus, but the attitude towards cyclists is not good. Seems like a pretty good reason to keep people from driving.

In the distant past I had a friend that would joke about counting her commute time towards her work day. I got the impression it was more a reality than a joke though

Thats why I don't bring it up any more. There are other bike commuters at work who are so honest. I don't want that reputation.

My employer allows up to a half-hour of exercise per day on the clock and has a shower facility. There have been times when that was just about the brightest side of working there for me.

A previous employer paid about $150/mo in cash to the winner of an alternate transport raffle. One ticket for riding the bus, biking, car pooling, etc. per day. I won the raffle about 50% of the time.

Enjoy the favorable working environment in your area while you can and while it lasts. Your employment future may not always be so bright or the need for your particular skills might be reduced by unforeseen developments or technological change. Come a change in the fortunes and trends in the economics, opportunities, and/or technological needs of your chosen profession some highly desirable enlightened folks like your yourself might be scratching each others eyes out for the same job.

I'm self employed so treat myself to all kinds of incentives. Like a beer for every day I ride. :-)

My wife's company is looking at some serious stuff for bike commuters (I think there're about 20,000 employees on their local campus). They're working with local cities and counties to get Dutch standard bikeways emanating out from the campus towards residential areas with high numbers of employees and areas where employees go to eat lunch or run errands. They're looking at better bike parking.

They're hoping to get something setup so that employees who ride a certain amount rather than drive will get some significant discounts on health insurance. The GBP study played a huge role in this. They're also looking at setting up a bikeshare system for on-campus and near-campus use (lunch, errands). That their CEO is from Sweden and believes strongly in bicycling for transportation doesn't hurt.

They only ever do anything like this when they get a break on the health insurance plan for doing so. Once or twice there have been small incentives to actually have yourself assessed by a rep from Kaiser with a scale and a handheld electrode body fat meter. We used to have a yearly "Fitness Challenge" with a prize for logging workouts, but this year it evaporated, probably for lack of volunteers to run it, or annoyance from the Zoomba types that the triathlete types always won. We have volunteers forming our team for the county bike-month festivities but it's nothing the company does.

My employer is not lacking for real estate due to the nature of our business, and the company went through drastic downsizings in the 1980's and 1990's, and so parking is not ever going to be an issue. Because of the size and the location in the exurbs a car is pretty often a necessity and I have to pick my bike commuting days based on whether I need to drive around the plant.

My former employer didn't offer any commuting incentives. They did offer a 20% discount with a local gym to encourage healthier lifestyles, maybe I should have tried collecting that $40 (20% of the $200 annual gym membership fee) since I didn't need the gym membership but still stayed fit. It never really occurred to me to do so though since I didn't bike commute for financial gain other than less trips to the doctor's office and the gas pump.

OK My Employer is crazy enough to know that work related accidents cost this company a lot of money. Time loss on the job, possible law suits while trying to figure out how to keep OSHA happy and off our hinds. Insurance premiums are huge. It is acknowledge here that healthy employees work better, GET TO WORK ON TIME, and do not get hurt as much as ones limping around the plant overweight and in a aging workforce. You may not care for your employees ( Booger1), but that is going to cost you in the long run. So I wanted to know what you "forward thinking individuals" get from your employer on these very issues which are driving them to think out of the box. Right now we get health club reimbursements and have a Nurse here twice a week to check blood pressure and answer questions on health , fitness and nutrition. A massage therapist that comes in and opens an office for scheduled appointments. But we need health and safety and all that to start at home and once we leave it to come to work for sure. I am appreciative on all the feed back even those negative.
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