Educate me on how to find companies that encourages bike commuting

1

I’ve posted a similar thread before, and I tried to do my own research, but I need your help!

Can someone point to a direction where I can find information on “how to search for companies that encourage employees to commute by bicycle?”

I tried to use Indeed, Glassdoor, and LinkedIn, but having a little difficulties.

I found this article which list the companies in the states, which is great. I live in NYC, and there is one company listed in the article. I am wondering if there are more in NYC, but I do see more companies are in the west coast area.

2

Become super good at a critical skill set. Then you will find all companies you work for are suddenly very interested in finding a way for you to keep your bike in the building & very interested in setting up bike friendly policies.

7 Likes
3

Hmm… Good point. Rather than looking for a company that has a bike-friendly place, develop my skill set so that the company wants to keep you.

This is a good point because I need to reflect on the internal skillset, which I have the control, rather than seeking answers externally.

Thanks for the suggestion!

1 Like
4

That’s also likely to increase your salary so you can afford nicer bikes. :smiley:

3 Likes
5

Often you can find information about the building the company operates from: end-of-trip or end-of-journey facilities.

1 Like
6

Is there a particular reason why you are looking for these companies?

I ask because I worked for the furtherest thing from a “company that encourages bike commuting” for many years (old school, oil and gas company) and commuted by bike (and foot) all the time without any issues. The thing that I needed was a gym/locker room and a place to lock my bike. Both of which we had so it was no big deal. One thing never did was walk full lycra cyclist though the main lobby. Since my commute was never about “working out”, other than base milage, I wore MTB shorts and a loose fitting riding shirt.

1 Like
7

It’s also probably a function of the campus/office you might be working at as much as company culture. If you are working in a high rise in the middle of manhattan, I suspect the logistics are going to be tougher vs. a sprawling campus with amenities for the workers.

I’d echo the statement above about focusing on making yourself valuable. That’s really, really good advice that goes way beyond the commuting question. Many companies will bend over backwards for their most valuable people. As much as the HR department would like to tell you that all employees are treated equally, that’s not usually how it works.

1 Like
8

Commuting ability is less about company culture and more about company’s building and amenities. Yes a company with a culture is more likely to choose a building with those amenities, but it’s not required.
As cycling commuting becomes more popular and normalized, more buildings are either building, or refitting their spaces to include shower/lockerroom and secure storage. My wife is a commercial interior designer and ~50% of the work she does is these types of refits, taking old building designs from the 90’s/early 2000’s and updating them to todays needs.

I would be more focused on finding a company (and leader) that I align my values with and they value my contribution. You get that, you can bring a bike into the office if you want. You have a boss that’s a slave driver you’re not going to be enjoying riding even if you had a wonderful lockerroom setup.

2 Likes
9

As above, facilities are more important than culture. At a minimum you need reasonably secure bike storage, showers, and somewhere you can leave your kit during the day where it’s not going to fester and isn’t going to upset your colleagues. And if your company office doesn’t have that then you can often get round it by joining a local gym if everything else about the job is right.

I’m in London, not sure how similar the NYC bike commuting culture is to here (hopefully similar in being financial centres with bad traffic and bad weather!), but in the 20 years I’ve been bike commuting, offices with decent bike facilities have gone from being the exception to being the norm. I think demand is sufficient and/or bike commuters are vocal enough that it’s simply the default to include them in any office that’s being built or refurbished. I’d be surprised if any company I wanted to work for didn’t have them.

1 Like
10

This is actually #1 on your list for reasons RONDAL cited–and because, if you aren’t a good fit for the rest of the company’s culture and your boss’s style, their bike commuting friendliness won’t matter because you’ll be miserable, burn out, get fired, or all of the above.

If boss lets you park your bike in you office/cubicle/whatever, something like this or any of a dozen variations on that theme helps. Add 12-18 inches of pool noodle to the wheel slot if your wheel is narrow for more stability. When not in use, press the wheel loop down and it tucks away pretty well.

Most offices have restrooms adequate for changing. Worst case, baby wipes can clean up the stinky parts well enough and are affordable.

In NYC, getting the bike up the stairs or in the elevator. You may be able to reduce the issues by arriving early and leaving early if you have some flexibility in hours.

11

Luckily good facilities get more common in offices. Whilst that is amazing and a big plus for me, it would be one of my least important priorities when hunting for a new job.

There are quite a few ‘hacks’ when your office has no showers:

  • Sign up for a gym close to your work. Super win win situation. Commute, get your strength training in and shower (or just go there to shower ;)). I’ve been lucky enough to find one 3 mins from work that was affordable and hand an iron. That was super convenient and I didn’t have to worry about a crumpled shirt out of my gym bag :wink:

  • Get an E-Bike. Ride relaxed without sweating to work. On your way, home turn the assistance off and do your training.

12

Thank you all for your kind suggestions, and I have been thinking about changing career, but I think I will try to take the advice and try to improve my skill sets and make myself more valuable to the company.

Recently, I have been trying to talk with my team as things are stressful for everyone, and the communication between team members have been rather pointing fingers and not being very efficient. we lose our team members very often as they lose interests in working for a company where members are feeling judged and condemned when they speak out.

I noticed that this is happening because of expectations of managers and members are not aligned. This is the case because we are not communicating effectively and not listening to each other. hence, the pointing fingers are happening.

I was playing the victim for way too many years, so I decide to change and provide suggestions. Currently, we are using zoom to have semi-daily calls at 9 am and 4 pm. We often get, “that’s not good enough” attitude from the project manager. I talked with him with the issue and his intent is to:

  1. Share today’s agenda/target/goals from each member
  2. If the agenda is not aligned with PM’s expectation, he wants to communicate with them to adjust the expectation
  3. He does not want to hold everyone’s time so he wants a quick discussion and if necessary he wants to talk offline with people who are involved with the issue.
  4. at the same time, he wants everyone to chime in and listen to others so that if similar issue raise, then we have a way to solve that issue.

This was the original intent, but over time things get escalated and sometimes 3 and 4 were contradicting each other. The PM gets upset sometimes when things are not going as he wants so he tend to streamroll everyone. This is the issue…

I am just an engineer and I am not in management position, but I am slowly talking with everyone in semi-daily calls that things needs change. I proposed to have a team building activities at lunch time. In the activities, I will talk about what we make for 5 minutes and 15 minutes of Q&A, and also just talk about what we like about the presentation and what else we want to learn for 10 minutes. Base on the feedback, I will think about another 5 minutes talk, and repeat the process. The topic will be what we do 101 and I am planning to record the videos and save them in the server. Now, we have materials that company can use to train new hires. We often don’t have time to train new people, and based on the trainer’s ability, the result of the training quality is not consistant.

I am sure once I make the video and edit them, many people would express their opinion about how I should edit it. This is a win-win situation.

In this process, I can gain the following:

  1. Public speaking skill
  2. Writing skill
  3. Listening skill
  4. Team building skill
  5. People management skill
  6. Creating a training program(s) for the company

Engaging with people makes me happy, and I was not doing that before. I wanted to leave the company because I was miserable at work for 8 hours a day and felt like I was wasting my time. Now, I understand myself better that helping others and giving hands to those who need help gives me tremendous joy! I did not have hope in this company before, but now I have some hope. Hopefully, I can keep doing this until I get stopped by external force, but that’s ok. because by the time, I have gained so much skill, and I can now own this new skill set.

Thank you all for reading so far!!

1 Like