Tim Chesney, of Make Collective, is giving employees a cash bonus if they bike to work.

Fitness, yes. Less pollution, yes. Travel zen, absolutely. But cash?

A small Christchurch business has come up with a unique reward to get their employees biking to work.

Employees of Make Collective, a creative and advertising agency, receive $5 every time they bike to and from work, but if they bike more than half their annual work days, the amount will double.

JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF Elliot Gilmore, left, says biking to work was "hard" at first, but he's keen to make it a regular thing both for the pocket and for his health.

Make Collective's Tim Chesney said he hoped the scheme would encourage a longer-term trend, "rather than just getting someone to bike to work once".

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"For a while I had been thinking it would be great to incentivise cycling in some way. I'm a really keen cyclist [and] cash is clearly the most obvious incentive," he said.

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"My gut instinct is that it could be something really good for the workplace. I know for myself I show up feeling a lot more energised, my blood is already flowing."

Dollars would accumulate and be paid out as a cash bonus at the end of the year. The scheme launched last week after months of deliberation on the best way to get people peddling.

"We have a time-tracker for work, so we now have a task in the tracker where you just track an hour when you bike to work," Chesney said.

JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF Elliot Gilmore, left and Tim Chesney, both of Make Collective. The company is offering employees $5 every time they bike to work. If employees bike half their work days in a year, they'll get $10 a ride.

"Everyone can see everyone's scores, so at the end of the year we tally it up."

Make Collective developer Elliot Gilmore began biking to work after the scheme launched. He said it had been hard so far.

"Recovering once I get to work is the hardest part, but I need to ride more for health any way."

A bad back kept him out of the gym, "plus I find if you have a gym membership, you kind of think, 'oh yeah, I could go tomorrow".

"It's been great so far, I mean, I get to ride through Hagley Park and see people feeding the ducks, reading books and stuff, which is quite different to just waiting for the lights to change while driving," Gilmore said.

"The dedicated cycleways really help. I can ride from here to uni, near where I live, on a cycleway for most of the way."

Their office, in the Ng Building on Madras St, had no shower facilities, which Chesney said meant some staff had hesitated to get involved.

"There's a gym across the road, so maybe we could somehow swindle a shower-only membership from there, or something," Chesney said.

He hoped the scheme, or some form of it, might be picked up by other businesses in the city.

"We work a lot with socially-minded clients and want our work to make the world better, so this is just us playing our part," Chesney said.

"Christchurch is slowly developing its cycle infrastructure, it's starting to get better and safer to bike, especially with the cycleways off the road, that's really key."



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