However, as Jamie Milroy, CEO of DASH Rides, made clear in a recent PRIS discussion with Vickie Graham, Managing Director of Reward Strategy, the issue is not the scheme itself; it is how it is being delivered. 

The distinction matters. Because once understood, it reframes not only cycle-to-work, but how organisations should think about benefit design more broadly. 

The Core Problem: Delivery, Not Design 

Jamie challenged one of the most entrenched assumptions in the market: that cycle-to-work schemes are inherently limited by legislation or structure. 

In his view, this is a “misconception behind the misconceptions.” 

The reality is that most of the criticisms levelled at the scheme are not about the scheme at all, but about outdated delivery models that have gone largely unquestioned. As he put it, the industry has defaulted to a single way of operating for decades, leading many to assume “that must be because that’s how it has to be done.” 

It isn’t. 

This distinction is critical for reward leaders. It highlights how easily legacy delivery models can become mistaken for structural constraints and how that assumption suppresses innovation.

Friction Is the Real Barrier to Engagement 

Jamie’s most compelling insight was that low engagement is not necessarily a behavioural problem, it could be a design problem. 

Employees are not rejecting the value of cycle-to-work schemes. They are encountering friction at every stage of the experience. 

He pointed to a number of common practices that organisations continue to accept as standard: 

• Employees being required to use inflexible voucher systems
• Restrictions forcing spend with a single retailer, often in one transaction  
• Unspent value effectively being lost  
• Long waiting periods between application and fulfilment  
• Annual sign-up windows that limit when employees can access the scheme 

None of these, he emphasised, are inherent to the scheme itself. They are product and process choices. 

From an employee perspective, however, they manifest as a single experience: unnecessary complexity.

The Behavioural Mismatch 

Perhaps the most striking example Jamie gave was how traditional schemes force employees into unnatural purchasing behaviour. 

Rather than enabling gradual, considered decisions, employees are often required to make “an entire year’s worth of purchase decisions at a time they probably naturally wouldn’t choose to.” 

This creates a fundamental mismatch between how benefits are structured and how people actually behave. 

Employees may not yet know what they want, what is available, or what they can afford. Faced with this uncertainty and the pressure to commit in a single moment, they disengage. 

This can be seen as a broader lesson in behavioural design. When benefits require employees to adapt to the system, rather than the system adapting to employees, engagement will always be limited. 

Removing Friction Changes Everything 

Jamie’s argument is straightforward: when you remove these constraints, engagement follows. 

If employees can access benefits when they need them, spend flexibly, and navigate a simple, intuitive process, the scheme becomes materially more relevant. 

What is currently perceived as a niche benefit begins to operate more like an everyday financial and lifestyle tool. 

This is where the strategic value emerges. Higher engagement does not just improve utilisation; it amplifies the broader outcomes organisations care about: wellbeing, productivity, and sustainability. 

A Wider Lesson for Reward Strategy 

While the discussion centred on cycle-to-work, the implications extend far beyond a single benefit. 

Jamie’s examples illustrate a recurring issue across reward programmes: organisations often accept low engagement as inevitable, rather than interrogating the underlying experience. 

In reality, many of the barriers are self-imposed. 

Legacy processes, administrative convenience, and historic provider models continue to shape employee experience in ways that no longer align with expectations. The result is a persistent gap between the theoretical value of benefits and their real-world impact. 

Rethinking What “Good” Looks Like 

The PRIS discussion ultimately points to a need for a more critical approach to benefit design. 

Reward leaders should be asking: 

• Are we solving for employee behaviour, or forcing behaviour into our processes?  
• Which elements of our offering are genuinely constrained—and which are simply legacy decisions?
• Where are we introducing friction that suppresses engagement?  

These are not operational questions; they are strategic ones. 

Because, as Jamie’s insights demonstrate, improving engagement is often less about adding new benefits and more about removing the barriers within existing ones. 

Final Thought 

Cycle-to-work schemes have long been viewed as a modest, sometimes underperforming component of the reward mix. 

But as this discussion highlights, their limitations are not inherent, they are designed. 

The opportunity is clear, by challenging legacy delivery models and focusing on employee experience, organisations can unlock significantly greater value, not just from cycle-to-work, but across their entire benefits strategy. 

The question is no longer whether employees value these benefits. 

It is whether organisations are making them easy enough to use. 

Interested in learning more? DASH Rides have are the focus of our recent Best Practice Case Study- Click here to find out more.