Whitepapers
Cycling can have a positive effect on employee health and well-being. The reason for this is that it constitutes employee movement and exercise. And since cycling is a form of exercise, regular bike and e-bike use can have the following positive impacts on employee health: 1) better physical health, 2) Improving cognitive function; and 3) boosting employee general well-being.
Exercise like cycling has been proven to be really good for health and wellbeing [1,2,3,4]. In fact, a study has shown that exercise reduces the risk of serious diseases like heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc. – and also limits the severity of such inflictions [2].
Moreover, and importantly in the context of e-bike use, research has shown that even small increases in exercise levels of normally sedentary people – like testing an e-bike – are associated with large improvements in health status [3]. This is great news for people that are currently unfit and do not exercise regularly; they can easily gain in health benefits from just a small increase in exercise. So, in short: the e-bike offers a good gateway exercise option to start the process of getting active.
The research is clear: regular exercise like cycling affects changes to the brain allowing enhanced cognitive ability [5]. More specifically, this refers to improved memory, faster learning, more agile thinking, longer attention spans and enhanced problem-solving skills [6]. All of these abilities stand to benefit from cycling and the fact that it requires people to spend time outdoors in the fresh air. One study looked at how well-being and cognitive function changed in regular cyclists and e-bike cyclists over an 8-week study and compared this to a non-cycling control group. The result was interesting: the benefits of cycling and e-cycling on cognitive ability were undisputed [7].
However, the effects on the e-bike group during the 8-week period were slightly larger. An interesting point to this study is that results can be already observed over a relatively short timeframe of 8 weeks.
The well-being research is also unmistakable: regular exercise like cycling has been proven to be associated with significant improvements in the well-being components of mood, sense of coherence, fortitude, stress and coping [8]. And well-being is important. It refers to the diverse dimensions of physical vitality, mental alacrity, and social satisfaction – measures that extend beyond the traditional definition of health [9].
Moreover, since cycling is typically performed outside, research suggests that it may improve mental wellbeing by leading to stress-reduction and the generation of positive emotions [10].
The implications of the research suggest that companies can boost their employee wellbeing and co- gnitive functionality by incentivizing bicycle mobility. The benefits include the following:
01 Less sick days
02 Less time lost in traffic (since e-bikes are faster in an urban context)
03 Fewer car trips and thus less emissions
04 More resilient workforce
05 Better general well-being at the company. And better ove- rall employee wellbeing means higher morale, less stress, and higher job satisfaction.
Urban Connect’s vision is to enable sustainable commuting to work. The multimodal corporate mobility platform offers e-bike and regular bike fleets as a mobility-as-a-service offering. In other words, companies get an all-inclusive service packaging that includes the E-bikes, their financing, regular maintenance, insurance, an award-winning reservation and vehicle management app, data-driven backend management and a fantastic user experience!
Multiple bluechip companies like Google, Microsoft, Hilti, Roche and many others have already offered their employees access to a smart e-bike fleet. “In one month alone, Hilti users made 829 trips by e-bike, with survey data confirming that 28% of users used the e-bike fleet for a distance previously travelled by car and 35% of users replacing or complementing trips by bus and/or train. This resulted in employees increasing the amount of time that they spent exercising on a considerably while also reducing the total carbon footprint from employee commuting.”
Such an e-bike fleet encourages employees to cycle and exercise more – benefiting their physical health, their cognitive functionality, and their general well-being.
Change Mobility – Change the World
