Cyclescheme benefits employees and employers. To maximise the rewards for your staff and your business, promote it early, promote it often!
Cycle commuters are healthier, happier, more punctual, and take fewer days off sick. The more of your employees who cycle to work, the better. Encouraging cycle commuting at your workplace is a worthwhile goal in itself. Cyclescheme, however, brings additional benefits – for staff and for you.
Employees save 23-39% on the price of bikes and equipment obtained through Cyclescheme. It works through salary sacrifice: the price is deducted from an employee’s gross salary, before income tax and national insurance contributions are calculated. That’s where the savings come from.
Since you don’t make employer national insurance contributions on the amount of salary sacrificed, you save 13.8%. On a £1,000 bike, that’s £138. The more of your staff who get bikes and equipment through Cyclescheme, and the more they spend, the more you’ll save. Raregood news in economically tough times!
Getting started
To maximise Cyclescheme uptake, all staff need to be made aware of it. Don’t hide the details away in a filing cabinet in the HR department. Make Cyclescheme part of your onboarding process.
If you’re not familiar with the jargon, ‘onboarding’ is something you do already (at least in part) in the form of job inductions. But onboarding can be wider than that. It’s ‘organisational socialisation’, a process to encourage staff to feel that they’re part of the business – that they understand what it does and how, and that they have a stake in it. Businesses who do onboarding well end up with employees who are more satisfied at work, more committed to it, and more productive. And that’s before you throw the wide-ranging benefits of cycling and Cyclescheme into the mix.
The cycle to work scheme is a popular and sought-after benefit. There are no downsides to referencing it right at the start: in the job description. List it as a benefit in the advert for the job, underneath holiday entitlement and above, say, access to a company gym.
At the interview stage, you’ll be giving promising applicants more information on what the job entails and what benefits it provides. Cyclescheme is one of those benefits. Include it. It’s bait on the hook for the best employees.
New employees need to be fully briefed on company benefits when they start work. Again, don’t neglect Cyclescheme. It’s good for them and good for you, but
they can’t sign up to something they don’t know exists – and they won’t sign up to something they don’t understand. Reference Cyclescheme in the induction. Promote and explain it in the employee starter pack. There’s material ready and waiting for you to use when you log onto the MySchemes benefits platform.
Going forward
Day one is an excellent opportunity to make new employees aware of benefits like Cyclescheme. But it’s not the only one. There’s a lot to take in for anyone starting a new job; it’s easy to overlook anything outside the role’s immediate responsibilities. So keep flagging Cyclescheme. Early employment check-in? Go over the benefits again.
There’s a wide range of promotional material on the MySchemes platform. Just click on the ‘marketing’ tab. You’ll find videos, e-flyers, posters, web text, example packages, and a means of sending customisable welcome emails. Put a poster in the staff room. Fix a laminated information sheet next to your company’s cycle parking – and in the car park. Share material via the company intranet.
Employees can sign up to Cyclescheme themselves in minutes; it’s not something that requires meetings or back and forth messages. They need only a few things:
- The Cyclescheme website address, www.cyclescheme.co.uk
- Your unique Cyclescheme employer code
- Their payroll number, which is on their payslip
- An understanding of why cycling to work is worth trying
Point your employees to the Cyclescheme website and suggest they sign up to the Cyclescheme newsletter. It’s free, and there’s loads of information to inspire them to cycle and to help them continue doing so.
Don’t only target new employees when promoting Cyclescheme. Existing employees have just as much as to gain, and the employer NIC savings are just as large. Staff who have never cycled to work may need reminding what Cyclescheme can do for them. Staff who have already used Cyclescheme might need reminding that they can use it again to get another bike or more equipment. Enthusiastic cyclists often own multiple bikes and typically spend more on them.
Ready to add Cyclescheme as an employee benefit?
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