Walking
In a city as compact as Oxford, many of your employees may live within walking distance of your workplace but just don’t consider it an option yet. Doing a travel survey and postcode mapping can help give you the data you need to start making changes.
You can also encourage walking as part of a longer journey that involves the bus, train, or Park & Ride. Walking is brilliant for employees’ physical and mental health and is the only truly free form of transport!
How to encourage walking
Market the benefits of walking to all employees, including senior staff.
Build walking into your workplace culture by holding lunchtime walks, walk-and-talk meetings or walking-based fundraising events.
Make walking around your site as convenient, safe and pleasant as possible. For example, you can offer pedestrian short cuts, landscaped paths, and well-lit routes.
Work with local authorities to ensure good upkeep of the paths that people most commonly use to walk to work.
Provide information about safe and quiet walking routes, such as the Oxford Online Walking Map. The Centre for Sustainable Healthcare's collection of Oxford walking maps is designed to highlight green space, together with safe/attractive walking routes for specific communities. There are maps there for Botley, Wood Farm, East Oxford, Jericho, Marston and Blackbird Leys.
Provide incentives to people who walk to work, such as free breakfast.
Get a sense of what misgivings your employees have about walking to work and then address them head on.
Example
Oxford Brookes University offers Walk & Talk sessions every Wednesday at lunch time; these are an opportunity for staff to meet each other and get some exercise in midday. They also publish walking routes for commuting to their campus, as well as pleasant routes for walking around campus.
Updated September 2024