Health Clubs/Fitness Facilities Articles

I have a new boss. I don’t yet know exactly how he thinks or what he expects from me. Sound familiar? Even if the organizational structure at your facility has not changed recently, you may have wondered exactly how and what to communicate to your manager or boss.

Most fitness facilities spend thousands of dollars on advertising in the hope of recruiting new members. Once a campaign is launched, if people don’t immediately start calling or walking through the doors with their checkbooks in hand, everyone is disappointed. How do you get the results you are looking for? Follow these 10 guidelines.

Every kid in America has fallen for this time-tested parental game, “Let’s see how fast you can get dressed. I’ll time you!” By using the same philosophy and interjecting fun into the workplace, you can help your employees be productive and enjoy their work environment.

Every facility follows a business model, which impacts all costs, including salary levels. When looking at these figures, keep in mind how costs are associated with revenue. For example, it is simpler to associate the cost of a personal trainer with the revenue of a session fee than it is to associate the cost of a fitness instructor with the revenue of a membership fee, which allows access to an entire facility. These cost-revenue associations may impact compensation.

What is your company doing to raise the bar in customer service? If you are not continually improving how you produce your products and deliver your services, you cannot exceed your customers’ expectations. The following six recommendations will help your organization take customer satisfaction to an even higher level.

When faced with the dilemma of how to motivate employees, many managers simply avoid offering employee incentives because they “don’t have it in the budget.” Yet most employees can be handsomely rewarded if managers budget time, effort and a bit of creativity.

Each year business owners and managers in the fitness industry spend millions of dollars promoting their facilities and trying to sell memberships. Every form of media is utilized —television, radio, direct mail and so forth. And yet, when we ask those customers who do end up joining our clubs how they heard about us, the number one answer in my many years of experience remains the same: word of mouth. Here’s what I hear: “My sister is a member.” “My neighbor encouraged me to join.” “My friend at work brought me as a guest.”

As owners and managers of fitness facilities, one of our greatest challenges is attracting, training and retaining great personal fitness trainers. While there are no guarantees when hiring employees in any profession, there are ways to significantly limit the amount of time you put into choosing the right kind of trainers for your facility. At Innovative Fitness, a Vancouver, British Columbia-based company catering exclusively to personal training clients, we use very specific criteria when hiring staff members.