We've got an extensive (and convoluted and difficult to use) intranet here at work. It's a massive organisation, with thousands employed here in Edinburgh and around the rest of the UK. There's a huge potential audience for that intranet. And there is virtually nothing on cycling on there.
It's odd. We have pages and pages on sustainability and green travel and so on. But it's all public transport or car sharing or regular 'no travel week' (meaning don't travel for meetings, not don't travel to work). The other week when the police bike marking was happening it struck me that there was no easy way of conveying the message to those who might be interested in my office, and given it was happening in Festival Square and the wealth of bike racks we have here, it's something that might have got people interested.
So at the start of the week I contacted our Travel department about the possibility of setting up a BUG. I offered to take the lead, to do the groundwork, basically to let them take all the credit. I even threw in the 'sustainable' line in the hope of triggering a CSR response. I got a reply the following day. Our 'Smart and Responsible' department is the place to contact, oh and look, here's a link on the intranet to a cycling story they ran. The link? From June, on it being National Bike Week. There was one other story I came across. From last year. On it being National Bike Week.
The gap is ENORMOUS. I've contacted 'Smart and Responsible', but as yet had nothing back. I'm contemplating making a 'new site' request to our IT people to set up a specific 'Cycling' page, and just seeing what happens.
I just really would have thought that an organisation with 3,000 people in this building alone would be more interested in cost savings through health benefits, and ticking that 'lower your carbon emissions' box, than it is (It's been announced on our intranet today that we're very highly ranked for lowering carbon emissions...).
This is just a moan really. Not much anyone can do to help, I've just got to navigate our cumbersome internal processes. Which are most annoying.
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