You could call it biking for bucks. Increasingly, Torontonians want to incorporate cycling into their work lives — and some companies are now paying people to do just that.

At Bursting Silver, a growing technology company with consultants in several Canadian cities, employees who bike to meetings get paid double the mileage they would recoup if they drove a car — $1 per kilometer rather than 50 cents.

It’s a new policy that came out of a conversation between Edmonton-based founder Al Povoledo and principal consultant James Schwartz, who regularly rides his bike to visit clients in Toronto.

Povoledo says the policy underscores the company’s social conscience. But it works for everyone.

It helps keep staff healthy and active, and “I actually think it saves money for customers,” he said.

If a consultant has to drive from the suburbs to a client downtown, the client gets charged 50 cents per kilometer, plus $25 for parking. That can add up to a $45 charge for the client.

“If someone takes their bike, we’re paying them $1 a kilometer and that ends up being cheaper,” said Povoledo.

If there’s air travel involved, the savings can be greater, says Schwartz, who works in Toronto and actually cycles to the airport.

“When I ride my bicycle to the airport for client travel, I am entitled to $24 for the 24-kilometre bike ride … However, if I took a taxi to the airport, it would cost the client $55. So on a return trip to the airport, I am saving my client $62, I get to keep healthy, and we have one less taxi to clog the road to the airport,” wrote Schwartz on his blog.

But it’s not just about the bottom line, says Povoledo.

“We wanted to integrate the concept of giving back to our culture and the way we work on a daily basis,” he said.

It’s the kind of idea Povoledo and Schwartz say is becoming increasingly mainstream.

Toronto Environmental Office director Lawson Oates agrees. Cycling rewards increasingly resonate with younger workers and employers, he said.

“It’s the wave of the future. (Companies) want to attract and retain topnotch employees,” and these people don’t necessarily function in “the old 9-5 mould,” he said.

Top Drawer Creative founder Howard Chang is a pioneer when it comes to bike-friendly employers. In 2003 the ad agency began a bike-to-work program offering an honorarium of $2 a day for employees who cycled to the agency’s old Leslieville location. To make the idea more attractive, Top Drawer installed showers and locker rooms and provided secure, indoor bike parking. Chang even made a deal with a bike supplier so employees could buy wheels at wholesale prices.

The company has since moved to the Beach and the honorarium has risen to $5 a day.

It’s a policy Chang says is one factor in helping retain employees in the transient advertising industry — and yes, many of them are younger. But among the 40 per cent of Top Drawer’s staff that cycle to work, at least one participant is in his 50s.

Chang, who acknowledges that not everyone rides year-round, would like more employees to sign on but says, “I’m not messianic about it.”

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He figures that the program has cost Top Drawer tens of thousands of dollars, but it’s an investment.

“Our agency’s very focused on social responsibility,” he said. “I just want to make sure we walk our talk, that we’re authentic.

“It’s one thing to advocate commuting to work, it’s another thing when you’re actually investing in it,” he said.