From the Playbook: How Good Cycles is reimagining engagement

In 2013, Good Cycles was founded as Australia's first bike-based social enterprise, breaking down barriers to employment for young people. But its goal is not to hold young people as long as possible, but to move them forward on purpose.

At, Good Cycles they treat the job itself as the intervention, embedding support into paid shifts and everyday work. Each young person joins for a six-month window, and that timeframe gives every month a purpose, because both the young person and the team know the time is building toward what comes next.

Within this, support comes from multiple directions rather than one. Each young person is given a youth employment coach, who meets them regularly on paid time to set goals and work through barriers, always starting from what the young person wants. The third corner is the operational supervisor, who runs the day-to-day work, and the three meet together so that tasks and personal goals never drift apart. This triangle of support means guidance never rests on a single relationship, and it keeps the young person's own goals at the centre of everyday work.

Meanwhile, career progression is mapped as a visible ladder wherever roles allow it. In the gardening team, young people climb from Gardener Level 1 to Level 2 and on to Team Lead. They earn licences and skills at each stage. Because each young person can see the next rung from where they stand, staying becomes a way of climbing.

The ladder doesn't end at the organisation's walls, because Good Cycles builds transition pathways. Around the three-month mark, milestone reviews shift each young person's conversation from settling in to moving on.

Every participant is building towards one of several positive destinations:

• An internal supervisory or ongoing role within the organisation.
• A placement through Good Cycles' commercial relationships and contracts.
• A job in the open labour market, backed by the skills and licences earned inside.
• Further study, or a role with another social enterprise.

These pathways are real because Good Cycles is embedded in a working ecosystem. Its commercial contracts, including work delivered for the City of Melbourne, connect young people to employers who already know the program. Fellow social enterprises like Homie and STREAT have become genuine next steps, with Good Cycles participants moving on to roles within them. Each transition becomes a warm handover to an organisation expecting them, rather than a cold application to a stranger.

Together, this approach redefines retention. Good Cycles doesn't measure success by how long young people stay, but by where they go next. A good exit is treated as a retention outcome, not a failure of it. It proves that the best way to engage young people is to keep moving them forward.