Read our Head of Training, Gary Laybourne’s report on our very own annual staff BikeFest, which he describes as ‘the gem in the crown’ of our training department and by the sounds of it, it came with an added fun factor for 2015…
‘BikeFest gives staff the opportunity to come together, learn, interact and feel inspired for the peak season ahead with a week-long festival of all things bicycle-related. While we have been running this internal event for several years now, 2015 saw a shift of focus: The aim was to lose the formal presentation factor and make it all about the riding and so, with great support from the major suppliers to the business, we ensured the days of riding and testing were as practical and interactive as possible but yet still retained an educational and structured approach.
How did we achieve this? Prior to the event, we agreed on 14 key bikes we wanted our staff to ride (across 8 brands) and then gave the store teams some pre-event research to do on each of them. This ensured a level of standardised knowledge to start off with. On the day, the brands then led guided rides at multiple time slots with the expectation that at least one person per store would attend. That way we knew that every store would at worst have one and at best have several experts with first-hand experience of each of the key bikes.
There was also the expectation that store teams would engage in mini-presentations with participating nutritional, clothing and technological companies plus borrow demo units or use samples provided to allow them to really test and understand each respective product. It is hard to talk enthusiastically and well-informed about a certain nutritional gel or a GPS unit if you have never tasted/tested it. Product and wear-testing by our staff is therefore becoming increasingly important to us as we believe it is key to providing outstanding customer service (together with the right portion of passion of course!)
The remaining time at the event allowed store colleagues to explore the impressive range of additional bikes (we had over 200 available each day!) at their leisure thus ensuring everyone walked away from Bikefest feeling like they had achieved both, a number of formal aspects required for their professional development as well as a sense of fulfilment at having tried out bikes according to their own personal preference.
A further highlight for many, of course, was meeting (and riding with) Sir Chris Hoy, who has become somewhat of a BikeFest regular.
Over the whole week we had over 500 colleagues attend Bikefest, the majority of which have already come back to us with excellent feedback and reviews about this new format and appreciating the opportunity to get paid for what others would pay for, riding some outstanding new bikes!
Watch this space for 2016…’
Our Evans Cycles Staff BikeFest 2015 was held between 23rd – 24th of March in Cannock Chase Birmingham for our northern regions and between 26th – 27th of March for our southern regions.