Starting a team or action group is a great way to motivate people to make active travel choices in your workplace.
Different people will bring different skills, ideas and motivations to your team such as:
- good organisational skills, for running events and activities
- real passion and enthusiasm about active travel, that will encourage others to get involved
- good relationships and networks in the organisation
- good writing and social media skills, to be able to share stories about what you have done on the Your Move website to earn you points.
Getting an Action Group started
Do you have a workplace committee where active transport would be a good fit, such as a staff wellness or sustainability group? Why not approach them or join a meeting to promote Your Move? You can find out if the committee is interested in introducing activities to promote active transport at the workplace.
If there isn’t a committee, you can start an action group inviting people who you think might be interested. These could be people who are:
- passionate about riding to work
- committed environmentalists who really want to make a difference
- are working in transport, wellness or environment as part of their role.
You can use your organisation’s intranet, e-newsletter, staff meetings, or put up posters to promote and invite people to join the group. Six to 10 people is a good number for a team; and you can include more people to help out with specific projects or organising events.
Set up a first meeting date and encourage anyone who is interested to come along.
Your first meeting
Get to know each other.
Groups work best together when you have common interests and purpose. You can ask people to share why they are interested in active travel, what they would like to offer to the team, and one fun personal fact.
Discuss how the team will work together.
How often will you meet? What roles will you each have? Will you need to report to a manager or seek approval for activities?
Brainstorm what you would like to achieve as a group.
How would you like to encourage walking, cycling and public transport at your workplace? Record all your ideas and think big – you can be practical and work out logistics later.
At your next meeting, you can complete our travel plan template so that you have a plan for the year ahead, and how the group can achieve it.
The role of the Champion (probably you!)
A Champion generally organises the meetings and keeps the group on track. If this is your role it doesn’t mean that you do all the work! It’s important for the group to be involved and to share tasks.
The role of the Champion includes:
- sending meeting invites and setting the agenda for meetings
- recording actions and emailing these after each meeting
- chairing meetings and keeping the group focused
- advocating for the team’s proposals, i.e. taking these to management.
While these duties should be shared among the team members, it’s important to have one person making sure that things get done and the Your Move meetings don’t fall between the cracks in people’s busy workloads.
One motivated person can make a huge difference.
Thank you for taking these steps and encouraging active travel at your workplace!
If it gets hard
Even with the best of intentions, action groups can face hurdles and find it hard to keep meeting and being active. Your Move activities need to fit in around work duties, which can be difficult with busy workloads. People have different opinions, and different styles of working and making decisions, which can also make it harder to meet and work together.
The Your Move team can help to reinspire and energise your group. The team is happy to visit your workplace, meet your group, and brainstorm creative ways forward with easy-win activities. Your Move quarterly forums are also a great way to get inspiration, stay engaged, and share ideas with other Champions.