Management support for Your Move and active travel can make a real difference. Their support shows commitment and is vital to making cultural changes to boost active travel at your workplace.
You can get started with easy-win activities such as an active travel breakfast, a social ride, or conducting an initial travel survey that may not need management involvement. However, management support is essential for more complex activities that will create significant change and require budget to be allocated (such as infrastructure improvements, rewards schemes, or purchasing a pool bike) as well as for policy changes (such as parking allocation).
Five tips for gaining management support:
- Connect to their goals and priorities. How does Your Move connect to your organisation’s strategic plan, values, mission and goals? How can you help them? Does Your Move solve any existing problems e.g. building a positive team culture through workplace events?
- Make a case for your program. What positive benefits can Your Move bring to your workplace? Healthier, happier employees, reduced sick leave, good corporate reputation, reduced parking costs etc. Try to think about what will be important from your management’s perspective. For example, even if active travel is important to you for environmental reasons, it may be more relevant for your management to present a case based on increasing productivity through reduced sick leave.
- Be prepared. If you are asking for endorsement or budget, make sure you are clear about what you need. Show that you have consulted with staff, researched and canvassed a range of ideas, considered the benefits and risks, and formed an action group with capacity to do the work.
- Find a management advocate. Is there anyone in the executive team who is a committed cyclist and could be your advocate? Is there someone who can promote Your Move with management? Provide your advocate with regular updates, seek their feedback, and ask them to update management and gain approvals where necessary. You may like to promote and create a profile of your advocate to show management’s support.
- Involve management in your activities. Invite senior managers to present certificates or give speeches at recognition events and to attend Your Move forums with you, so they stay informed and involved.
