Pedaling Towards Employee Wellness: Host an Office Breakfast for National Bike to Work Day
Posted by Sara on Tuesday, May 13th, 2014 with 2 Comments
Are you on the lookout for ways to celebrate your employees? Promote wellness in the workplace? Make your office a greener, more earth-friendly place? Then heads up: Friday is National Bike to Work Day, the culmination of a monthlong effort to promote two-wheeled commutes, and the perfect occasion for your next employee appreciation breakfast!
Celebrate National Bike to Work Day with a healthy office breakfast!
Image source: Flickr user Richard Masoner
The entire month of May is National Bike Month, this week (May 12-16) is National Bike to Work Week, and Friday is National Bike to Work Day. Not only does biking cut back on harmful emissions and help the environment, but it’s a wonderful way to create a culture of wellness in the workplace and promote biking as a positive physical activity that can help employees stay healthy (while boosting productivity and reducing health care costs).
If your office is in an urban, bike-friendly community, there’s no reason not to join the thousands of Americans who are participating in this year’s big event — and we have some tips on how to make sure your company’s Bike to Work Day celebration is the best in town!
1) Start building buzz now! The League of American Bicyclists has plenty of printable posters and other marketing materials you can hang in your break room or share on social media… and the promise of a post-ride office breakfast may help motivate last-minute participants who aren’t already used to biking.
If some employees can’t participate by cycling, they can help greet bikers with refreshments when they arrive at the office.
Image source: Flickr user Karen
2) Make it a competition: which department or team in the office can recruit the most cyclists? The winning team members all get a bike-friendly prize; company-branded water bottles make an excellent reward.
3) Set aside bike parking spaces for the day (or the week!) if you don’t have them already. According to the incredibly bike-friendly City of Portland, about ten bicycles will fit in one car parking spot, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to reserve a few in your building’s parking lot or garage for National Bike to Work Day.
4) Relax the office dress code for the day if that might be an obstacle for some would-be participants.
Biking to work can be a wonderful team-building activity.
Image source: Flickr user NAVFAC
5) If you don’t have shower facilities in your building, supply some face wash, fresh mini-deodorants, and towels in the bathrooms for hard-pedaling employees to freshen up once they arrive at the office.
6) Plan a truly awesome office breakfast to welcome your hungry cyclists to the office! In an effort to incorporate employee wellness, skip the sugary doughnuts and empty-calorie bagels for healthier breakfast fare. Get fancy with brunch-style dishes, like egg white omelets and vegetable frittatas, or plan a Continental-style spread with hardboiled eggs, fresh fruit, whole grain toast with almond butter, and smoked salmon.
7) Find a way for non-cyclists to participate, too. Some employees may not have bikes, or be physically unable to ride, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be a part of a wellness-focused celebration. Ask non-cyclists to set their own individual fitness goals, like walking during their lunch breaks, or giving up sugary sodas and treats for the day.
If your workplace is already full of cycling fanatics, National Bike to Work Day is a wonderful opportunity to celebrate your collective good habits… and if it’s not, then it’s even more important to take the opportunity to promote wellness and environmental responsibility! Regardless, this event is a chance to have fun, be healthy, and bond as a team over a killer office breakfast — which is easy to pull off, even at the last minute, thanks to online ordering and prompt delivery from Waiter.com!
When it comes to feeding employees and coworkers, make your company's food program really count! If your workplace dining plan needs to take it up a notch — or if you don't have one at all — Waiter.com is here to help. From Virtual Cafeteria Service to diverse menus to local takeout & delivery, Waiter.com offers customizable dining solutions for every business and budget. Contact us today to get started!
In a way it’s sad we have to use high calorie incentives to promote exercise in this country. However as they say, whatever works! I could see local trendy lunch trucks getting behind this and catering to the breakfast crowd in a big way!
Definitely! And there are lots of healthy options that would be perfect for a post-bike breakfast – yogurt, fruit, even egg-white omelets!