Looking for the ultimate team building exercise? While most team building activities can be completed in an afternoon, this one can take months to complete and will create friendships for life. A corporate cycling challenge is a great way to break down barriers between departments and encourage individuals to get active and take on new challenges.
A corporate cycling challenge is not something that will happen without a bit of effort. It takes planning and buy-in from your team to make it effective. But the rewards can be well worth the effort. It can help to strengthen team bonds, encourage cross-department collaboration, and also help to improve your company image from a PR perspective.
What is a corporate cycling challenge?
A corporate cycling challenge is sometimes known as a charity bike ride. It is typically an organised long-distance bike race that companies can enter as a team. It’s an opportunity to take on a physical challenge over a longer distance in a safe and controlled way. The roads are usually closed for the challenge, or they will be segregated from traffic to ensure everyone feels safe.
Why take part in a corporate cycling challenge?
A corporate cycling challenge is a great way to bring people together, improve collaboration, facilitate better problem solving and encourage workers to become more active. It’s also a great way to encourage people to make cycling a part of their day and reduce the number of cars in your company car park. You can also improve your public image through fundraising and through effective employee engagement strategies.
For your workers, there are the obvious benefits of better health, improved team morale, the opportunity to get to know your colleagues better, and better stress management. In preparation for the challenge, it’s common for workers to ditch the car in favour of their bike. This can deliver savings and effectively boost your earnings.
Preparing for the challenge
If you’re planning to announce your participation in a corporate cycling challenge, you’ll need to follow these steps to ensure it is streamlined and effective.
Gathering interest
First, you need to know if there is any appetite for a cycling challenge. Since much of the training will be outside of office hours, you need to have buy-in from your employees, as they will be the ones taking up the challenge. Raise the topic and gauge initial interest in the charity cycle ride. You might need to highlight the various perks, from improved physical fitness to the charitable angle.
Fundraising
Once you have decided on your cycling team, you’ll then have to get started with your fundraising efforts. Lots of companies agree to match donations raised by their employees to effectively double the donation. This also helps to improve your public image and ensure that your company gets the PR boost as a result of the challenge.
Training begins
Encourage those taking part in the challenge to follow an established training programme so they’re ready for the race on the day. Remind them that the point is not to finish the race in the fastest time, but to ensure they all cross the finish line together. This means that those of all fitness levels can take part without feeling left out.
Preparing for the day
On the week running up to the race, all eyes should be on their fundraising achievement and the challenge ahead. Even those who aren’t taking part can be encouraged to show their support with t-shirt printing and banner-making workshops. This can help to improve the sense of camaraderie.
The day of the race
Consider hiring a corporate photographer for the day to document your team’s progress and to ensure you have some incredible original images for your website and press release. Your team needs to be kitted out with branded cycling tops and hats to help make a visual impact. It’s a good idea to have members of senior management taking part in the challenge alongside workers from all sectors of the company.
Documenting and planning ahead
Make sure you make a big fuss on social media, on your website and with a professional press release to highlight your participation in the race. You can highlight the incredible accomplishment of your team and their fundraising efforts. It’s also a great opportunity to shine a light on the benefits to your employees and how it might have changed things like their commuting habits. You can also use this as an opportunity to announce your participation in next year’s corporate cycling challenge. This will help to drum up some early interest in your workforce.
Final thoughts
A corporate cycling challenge offers so many potential benefits for everyone involved. It can help to boost collaboration, create friendships for life and make senior management more accessible to those within the organisation. All it takes is a little bit of enthusiasm and planning to get things off the ground.
