Sonos is putting serious money on the table to get its employees to commute to and from work via bicycle. Since April, Sonos — which manufactures wireless hi-fi systems and is one of the biggest, hip new companies to descend on downtown Santa Barbara in recent years — has offered to pay $600 to each of its 400 employees to buy new bikes and bike gear. So far, 87 Sonos workers have taken advantage of what’s dubbed the Earn-a-Bike Program, the first of its kind in the county.
Employees who give up their company-designated parking spaces “earn” their new bikes by commuting bipedally 60 times. Those who retain their parking privileges have to make the daily commute 80 times to “earn” their wheels. After the bikes have been earned, Sonos has agreed to pay $5 for every day that Earn-a-Bike participants cycle to and from work. Beyond that, the company conducts monthly raffles among participants in which one lucky employee gets a paid day off.
While many of the region’s largest employers — UCSB, Cottage, Deckers, and Lynda.com — have provided incentives for employees who choose alternate commuting methods, Sonos has clearly pushed the envelope. It operates out of four (soon to be five) downtown storefronts and has just increased its number of employees from 300 to 400. The demand for a finite number of parking spaces has proved to be both an expensive proposition for the company and a logistical nightmare for employees trying to chart their daily course. By persuading employees to commute by means other than car, Sonos’s facilities managers sought to reduce both cost and headaches. Few things are as persuasive, they concluded, as cash.