Getting employees cycling in your workplace

Hi there all,

I posted a thread about promoting cycling in my workplace (I work in the facilities dept of a large kid's charity in Clerkenwell) on this forum a few months ago and had a great response. One idea I had was hiring say 4-5 bikes for a week from gocycle or similar and then having employees use the bike to get home and back one night of the week, do a rota system that kind of thing. The idea being that, as we all know - once you just bloody do it and try and commute by bike you realise how horrible and unpleasant public transport is and how awesome cycling is and go out that weekend and buy a bike! Yes yes we will have more wobbling numpties on the roads undertaking you and swerving in front of you at traffic lights here and there but we are all in this together, one more wobbling numpty is one more healthy, happy, non polluting person right?! And they won't ALWAYS be a wobbling numpty will they?

So, what I wanted to know basically is does anyone know of or run any other good cycle hire places in London.

The second and bigger question was about liability and the legal side of things. Are we, as an employer, liable for the person's safety seeing as we lent them the bike? Do we get them to sign disclaimers or is this a bit over the top? Any legal advice ion what we should and shouldn't do along with giving them the bike would be really appreciated. Thanks a lot.

Ed

Have you considered cycle training?

You'll probably need to give them a helmet that they can then hang off their handlebars.

but also...

Have you thought of approaching large chain of bike shops / manufacturers of bikes who may give you / loan you bikes being a charidee 'n' that? Get them corporately decaled up etc.