A green building and sustainability consulting firm, for Paladino and Company, “supporting and promoting alternative commuting options” is part of their DNA.

With thirty-one percent of staff already bicycling to work, the firm sought BizCycle certification “to verify through a third party rating that we are walking the talk”. So how did they measure up? Paladino demonstrated that identifying the low-hanging fruit to improve the company’s support for bicycling didn’t have to be difficult or expensive. After estimating a Silver score, a little internal preparation yielded golden results.  BizCycle awarded Paladino and Company 37 credits out of 50 possible to be certified as a Gold level BizCycle workplace. Here’s what Paladino had to say about the firm’s certification experience:

Q.  Why did Paladino and Company seek certification?

A. Paladino supports Cascade Bicycle Club’s mission to create a better community through bicycling, and we were interested in demonstrating a leadership position as a cycle-friendly organization by becoming one of the first companies to achieve a BizCycle rating.

We are moving to a new office in the fall of this year, and the certification process provided the chance to fully understand how to optimize our new space for cyclists while we are still in the design process.

Q.  Did you make any changes before or during the certification process?

A. We were pleased to find we could achieve Silver without implementing any changes, but we wanted to go for the Gold! The certification process allowed us to see where we could make improvements. These included:

-Creating a bike club and actually tracking the number of cyclists in the office

-Issuing a survey to identify challenges and barriers, and interest in programs

-Increasing internal and external communications, including developing a staff bike club newsletter (‘The Dirt’) and SharePoint site, and adding cycling directions to the office on our external web site

-Transferring Bike to Work Month coordination from HR to a cross-team group of staff to build community through active participation

-Developing a short-term and long-term bicycle plan for the office to ensure that we continue to build on our successes and measure progress

-Offering in-house bike info/maintenance classes and creating a bike tool kit for staff use

Q.   What would you say is the biggest challenge to encouraging bicycle commuting to Paladino?

A. We have the infrastructure and the culture. Per our survey, two barriers for those not cycling today are urban traffic and distance (over three miles). Our goal is to encourage more people to be brave enough to try bike commuting a few times.  Once they feel confident and safe, understand which routes work best, and realize the distances are manageable, they’ll be hooked.

Q.  What has been your biggest success? What drives the bike culture at Paladino?

A. Our biggest success has been further building awareness of bike commuting and creating a sense of community. We recently held our first official bike club lunch & learn, where we discussed the BizCycle certification, shared the bike survey results, and demonstrated how to change a flat tire.

Our bike culture is a natural extension of our employees’ commitment to sustainability. BizCycle certification is a powerful internal validation of our efforts encouraging employee engagement.

Q. Moving forward, does Paladino have any long-term changes in mind as a result of going through certification?

A. As mentioned above, we are designing our new office space now, and certification has made us more aware of cyclists’ needs. This awareness will be brought to the design so that we can accommodate our 34% bike mode split goal and more.

Congratulations to Paladino and Company on Gold level certification. Keep up to good work! Whether your company is already bike-friendly or looking to become more so (or both!), BizCycle certification is simple and effective. Contact bizcycle@cascadebicycleclub.org today or visit bizcycle.cascade.org to learn more. 

Novo Nordisk is BizCycle’s first gold level bicycle-friendly business. Specializing in diabetes care equipment and medications, Novo Nordisk recognizes the connection between bicycling and the prevention of chronic disease associated with physical inactivity. In addition, while certification applies only to the Seattle facility, the company headquarters are in Denmark, a county well-known for its bike culture.

Novo Nordisk cyclists out for a ride

The local Novo Nordisk facility located in South Lake Union has an obvious bike culture as well. Twenty percent of staff regularly bicycle to work. Those active commutes are supported by showers, lockers and even a boot dryer. Details like warm, dry toes for the ride home can be critical to the decision to bike year-round. For those commuters whose bikes need a little love to get them out on two wheels when the weather warms or just in time for Bike Month, the company sponsors a Spring Bike Clinic  where mechanics help employees get their bicycles in ride-ready shape.

If amenities and programming aren’t incentive enough to commute to work by bike, Novo Nordisk employees receive $100 to R.E.I for every month they regularly bicycle. By contrast, car parking costs $80 per month. To track employee transportation trends, Novo Nordisk measures bicycling along with all commute modes weekly and reports the trends to staff on a quarterly basis. Something must be working–the number of bicyclists reported has increased since 2009.

What’s more, Novo Nordisk recognizes that internal support for its bicyclists won’t increase bicycle commuting if employees can’t access the workplace by bike. Located at Fairview Ave. N and Mercer Street, the facility is at the heart of the Mercer Corridor Project and representatives from Novo Nordisk sit on the project advisory committee. With only so much availability for parking, the company actively advocates for bicycle improvements in the corridor.

All of this spectacular work earned Novo Nordisk’s Seattle facility a final total of 37 out of BizCycle’s 50 possible credits, surpassing the 35 credit minimum to achieve gold level certification. Congratulations and well done!

To learn more about BizCycle certification or how you can bring bike-friendly best practices to your workplace, visit bizcycle.cascade.org or email bizcycle@cascadebicycleclub.org. 

To qualify for BizCycle certification, Cascade needed to set a goal to increase the number of staff who regularly bike to work.  After surveying the commute habits of our staff, our bicycle mode mode split—the percentage of employees who commute to work by bike on average—was found to be about 32%. We can do better than that!

A goal should be both motivating and achievable with a reasonable rate of increase. A goal  should also consider context, including the average bicycle mode split for the area, what’s happening at similar organizations, and what’s likely among  your employees. Finally, a goal should take into account plans to implement future programs and policies to increase bicycling.

Setting a goal to increase bicycle commuting to 45% of staff might call for a few more bike hooks in the office...

Thus, to develop a three-year goal mode split for Cascade to increase bicycling to by 2016, I went through the following thought process:

1. Overall, 3.5% of commuters bike to work in Seattle. Thirty-two percent is already impressive for a business, and may present a challenge to push higher.
2. Among bicycle-focused businesses, 32% may actually be low. BizCycle’s first applicant, Washington Bike Law, reported that over 90% of employee trips were made by bicycle.
3. Cascade has 36 staff, the organizations I’ve encountered with bicycling rates nearing 90% of commuters have fewer than 5 employees, and
4. Our Magnuson Park office is not centrally located relative to where staff live and/or send their kids to school
5. According to data collected in the mode split survey, 56% of employees live within seven miles of the office. We normally recommend a five-mile ‘reasonably bikeable’ radius, but it was found that only 9% of employees surveyed lived within five miles of the office, thus many more employees living further were still able and interested in bicycling to work. Magnuson’s proximity to the Burke-Gilman trail extends the range of what many would consider an easy commute.
6. In our goal-setting guidance document, we recommend setting a goal for a ten percent increase in the bicycle mode split percentage each year. This means increasing Cascade’s bicycle mode split by 3.2% each year for a mode split of about 42% in 2016.
7. Recognizing that our mode split for October is lower than the yearly average that would be inflated by increased rates of bicycling in the more pleasant summer months, we rounded our three-year mode split goal for bicycling to a yearly average of 45%. Additionally, Cascade now has plans to measure bicycling again in July to gain a better understanding of seasonal variation and begin to set seasonal goals.

With a baseline mode split (32%) and an audacious three-year goal set (45% by 2016), Cascade is ready to move forward in the BizCycle process. Looks like it’s time to crunch the numbers and see how we score–stay tuned!

In a previous post, I discussed the steps to becoming a BizCycle certified workplace and revealed that even our very own Cascade needed some internal preparation to qualify for the program. BizCycle requires that organizations meet six prerequisites before embarking on the certification process.

What are the prerequisites?

1. Have a goal bicycle mode split for the worksite. Nope…
2. Know the current bicycle mode split for the worksite. Not yet…
3. Provide adequate bicycle parking for commuters and visitors. Sorta…
4. Host one event per year that includes bicycles. Roger that one!
5. Send out at least one bike-specific message to all commuters yearly. On it.
6. Participate in community planning or advocacy for bicycles. Yeah, we do that…

Cascade has thirteen bicycle hooks in two bike rooms downstairs for staff and volunteers to hang their bikes in a secure space inside the office. Outside, our five-space short-term rack is available for visitors, but isn’t visible from the front door. Cascade produces eighteen major cycling events (including the Commute Challenge), 1,500+ free daily rides, over 160 classes and dozens of presentations, camps and fundraisers every year. Just the fact that Cascade staff participate in and form teams for the Commute Challenge would have sufficiently met the bicycle event prerequisite.

For messaging, Cascade sends 26 Braking News releases, seven Crosstown Traffic emails during Bike Month, four Bike Business E-Newsletters and dozens of action alerts yearly.

However, while a hook in the bike room is noticeably harder to come by on some days more than others (plenty of elbow room to hang my bike in January), I found that Cascade does not actively measure employee bicycle commuting. Without an accurate percentage for how many employees bicycle to work on a given day and therefore, a baseline to set a goal from, Cascade fell short of two of our own prerequisites.

How do we measure bicycling? 

With thirty-six employees, including staff who consistently work offsite, an online survey seemed the easiest way to measure commute habits. The survey tool –that can be used as a model for any organization measuring commuting—asked staff to indicate how they commuted to work the previous week.

The result: for the week surveyed, 32% of trips to work by Cascade staff were made by bicycle.

It seemed surprisingly low for a staff of bicycle enthusiasts (in our defense, it was particularly rainy that week), which illustrates a common challenge: when to measure bicycling. Although summer bicycling rates (or Commute Challenge participation) offer more to brag about, seasonal measurements can be useful for planning infrastructure and programs.

BizCycle requires applying organizations to set a baseline. During the winter months, this will result in a lower percentage. Determining a mode split percentage worthy of scientific excellence isn’t necessarily the point and has no weight on your credit total. The objective is to establish a quantitative, repeatable measurement of bicycling to set a baseline and track trends over time (in fact, repeated measurements and demonstrating trends over time, will earn you credit).

Surveying Cascade staff also presented an opportunity to understand barriers to bicycling and what Cascade could change to be more supportive. Weather, hilly terrain, distance and the time it takes to bike were the most common barriers expressed by Cascade staff. Other barriers included errands or after-work activities, family schedules, limited daylight hours and arriving sweaty to a destination. Staff expressed an overwhelming desire for Cascade to offer a financial incentive or a transit subsidy to encourage commute alternatives. The BizCycle credit list represents a 50-point to-do list for what an organization could do to increase bicycling, but we recognize that most workplaces can’t do it all. Reaching out to staff allowed us to identify a few best practices to prioritize as we work to increase bicycle commuting. How much do we want to increase bicycling? Sounds like it’s time to set a goal. Heads up for my next post on setting a goal for bicycling.

Looking for more guidance on how your workplace can measure bicycling? Check out our measurement resources on the BizCycle website.