Tag: Business Advice

Row class

Creating Space for New Fitness Fads

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When I was in college, there were two stationary bikes in the gym’s cardio room. One of them had a tiny little screen that allowed you to set the number of miles you wanted to log or the amount of time you wanted to exercise; it also had a primitive graphic, like something from an Atari 2600 video game, that let you visualize your course: up “hills”, down “valleys”. That was the high-tech bike. The other one had a wheel that looked kind of like a giant fan. There were no screens or graphic-based interfaces attached to it; you just got on and pedaled.

I haven’t seen my college gym in, ahem, a very long time, but, given the pressure on colleges and universities to supercharge their fitness and recreation offerings, I imagine it’s a much more polished (and much more visited) place than it was back in the day. Two stationary bikes, one of which apparently was built in 1897? There’s no way they’d get away with that anymore. What with the growing popularity of spin classes in the past decade, I imagine the college rec center has a whole room dedicated to sleek-looking stationary bikes now, and the bikes are probably equipped with the latest digital enhancements that give their riders a full dossier of personal health data.

My point is, fitness centres have to keep up with changing fads, and this is true whether they’re on college campuses, independently owned, or part of a corporate wellness program. They have to do aerobics when people want aerobics, host Zumba classes when there’s excitement about Zumba, and so on. All well and good, but how exactly should a fitness center keep on top of changing trends when those trends involve deep-pocket investments in big, expensive pieces of equipment? Athletic Business magazine posted an interesting article on this topic a couple months ago, focusing on the growing popularity of rowing machines. One fitness industry veteran interviewed for the article put it this way: “Rowing will never be group cycling, but it is gaining its place with more hard-core fitness enthusiasts.” CrossFit aficionados have brought it nearly into the mainstream, and more and more gyms and fitness centres are increasing their stock of rowing machines, even lining them up and creating classes à la spinning classes.

But what if you’re a small outfit that can’t afford a whole roomful of new rowing machines? What if you don’t have the space for many large pieces of new equipment? How do you give your clientele the most up-to-date, exciting workout experience — the one they’ve been hearing so much about from friends and through advertisements, the one being touted at a rival fitness center down the street — if you don’t immediately have the resources for that kind of development?

As Athletic Business says, “To be sure, fitness facility owners needn’t run out and invest in a fleet of rowers, but nor should they continue to assume their current mix of cardio equipment is adequate to meet their members’ expectations.” That is, you have to focus on finding a balance. Then you have to make a plan for growth. Maybe you can start out by making space for one or two rowers. Keep close tabs on them: Make a note every time someone uses them. Note when they are empty for long stretches of time. Observe whether a line of people waiting to use them frequently forms.

Survey your clients to find out whether they’ve used them, when they did, for how long, and how they liked the experience. Ask whether they would sign up for a rowing class if one were offered. Set up a temporary class with a very limited enrollment (even just three or five would be okay). How is it received? What would participants change? Do they want more?

A business can’t change its programs and equipment the way teenagers change clothes — adoption of new fads should happen slowly, after testing, focus-group research, data-gathering, and trial-and-error. After you’re convinced that a fad is here to stay, and after you’ve conducted adequate research among your user base, then you can take the plunge and buy the equipment. Just make sure that when you do you’re keeping half an eye on the next emerging trend, because you’ll want to start researching that one too.

Oh, one last thing. After writing this I got curious and called my alma mater’s athletic center. I was told they recently ordered four new rowing machines!

Bringing Sales to the Next Level

Retaining Employees

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Some of the challenges fitness centres, gyms, and health clubs face are seasonal: getting members into the facility when the weather turns warm, dealing with the New-Year’s-resolution rush, running a member-recruitment campaign. But the challenge of holding on to valuable employees is perennial. After you’ve invested in a costly advertising and interviewing process, you spend a great number of resources training your staff and giving them time to acclimate. How do you then hold on to them for as long as possible?
Some club managers focus on keeping personal trainers happy. Gerard Oliver, General Manager of the Al Corniche Club Resort & Spa in Kuwait told IHRSA in a blog post that his facility keeps its fitness team incentivized by deemphasizing the revenues generated from personal training sessions. Without the pressure from the club to chase money by packing in as many sessions as possible, trainers are free to concentrate on the quality of their work. As Oliver says, “They have the desire and the time to education themselves, and interestingly enough, they have increased our revenues… They help members achieve the results they want and this helps with member retention, which is our top priority.”
For Aydin Buyukyilmaz, General Manager of Renewaclub in Turkey, the key strategy for successful employee retention is establishing a performance system that depends not on the budget of the club, but on the relative performance of the employees. Offering a competitive salary and a strong benefits package, while paying attention to market dynamics and making frequent adjustments accordingly, makes employees feel valued. But most of all, Buyukyilmaz says, the club works hard to create a sense of family among employees, which keeps them feeling connected and also benefits the club.
Lisa Welko, President of Ellipse Fitness in Appleton, Wisconsin, says the key is mentorship. “Build confidence in [employees’] abilities and allow them to grow within the organization,” she told the IHRSA blog. “We place special emphasis on training and continued development of everyone’s skills.” Fostering employees’ professional development increases their loyalty and keeps them motivated, Welko says.
One strategy might be to fire all these guns at once: Free your personal trainers from the pressure of increasing their number of sessions, focus on your employee compensation and performance packages, consciously create a sense of family among your staff, and emphasize mentorship and the development of specialized skills. Doing any one of these things takes time, money, effort, and a certain amount of vigilance; doing them all certainly will complicate a manager’s workload. But the potential payoff is huge: money saved, investments coming to fruition, and loyal expertise on staff. What more can a fitness facility ask for?
No doubt you have your own strategies for retaining your best employees. What are they? Share your best practices, and others will share theirs.

Trade Show 2.jpg

Why Conventions are Good for You

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It’s almost that time again, folks—IHRSA convention and trade show time. The upcoming event, slated for the mid week of March in San Diego, will mark IHRSA’s 37th year of gathering industry members for discussion, exploration, learning, marketing, and all-around celebration of the health and fitness world. Here’s why, if you haven’t registered already, you should consider doing so; if you have registered, here’s why you’ll be happy you did.

1) Connection. First and foremost, attending a convention or trade show—any convention or trade show, but especially the industry’s largest—gives you the opportunity to connect with others in the field. Sure they may be competitors, but your competitors have something to teach you. Happily, participants who choose to attend events like conventions generally do so with an open attitude. Through casual conversations, over meals and beverages, meetings and introductions, ideas are transferred and transformed. Want to know how the gym down the street handles retention issues? Want to understand why that other baseball center is so successful at attracting new customers? Here’s your chance to find out.

2) Education. The latest industry news comes out during conventions like IHRSA’s. Statistics on the health of the industry, trends to keep an eye on, threats to look out for, and the most up-to-date word on major players all get talked about here first. Also, conventions can be an invaluable source of information about best practices. How do other clubs handle issues like employee training, member retention, locker-room cleanliness, and difficult clients? Every topic is fair game for discussion at such conventions, and you might find yourself going home with ideas you want to implement immediately.

3) Relationship-building. Okay, this is a lot like the first item in this list, but what I’m talking about here is bigger and deeper than a mere connection. Connecting with others in the industry is important and building relationships with them is crucial. I want to emphasize this. As with any endeavor, you’re more likely to succeed with your business if you’ve got a solid, reliable support system; this is true on all levels. The salespeople looking to sell you products at a trade show are not merely trying to fill their pockets. They really want the opportunity to meet you, get to know you, understand your needs and desires as a customer. Industry reporters, trade organizations, fellow business people—everyone is worth considering as the source of a potentially valuable relationship.

4) Sharing. Even if it’s easy to forget for most of the year, conventions and trade shows can serve to remind you that the difficult work you do is the same as the difficult work others do. And just as you can gain ideas and tips from other facility folk you meet at such events, other facility folk can gain ideas and tips from you. You might even seek to take part in a panel or give a talk. The pay-off might not be immediate, but eventually they’ll become clear, in tangible and intangible ways, you’ll reap the benefits of having been a part of a major event for months to come—at least until next year’s convention.

Working Out Around the Season of Insanity

Working Out Around the Season of Insanity

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It’s that time again, the time I like to refer to as the Season of Insanity. Every year around this time, things become outrageously chaotic. At work, everyone is scrambling to finish projects before the end of the year, which inevitably, all end up on my desk at the same time. At school, there’re a sudden slew of no-school holidays, plus professional development and parent-teacher conference days off, while the kids are all tired from a couple months of steady homework, and coming off of Halloween-candy sugar highs. Meanwhile, in the span of three weeks, I’m invited to more events than I’ve been all year. Then there’s the holiday shopping, cooking, planning, and wrapping to contemplate…
What this means for fitness centres and sports facilities is that client visits slow down. Fewer client visits equal less revenue. This can either be in the short term, where you’re missing out on class payments or members aren’t spending on personal trainer sessions, massages, and other extras; or in the long run, where a client becomes less likely to renew her membership when she goes for a month or two without making it to the gym. What can you do to help your already busy clients squeeze in visits to the gym when their schedules become even more packed?
First, remind them that the most important time to maintain gym-going habits is now, when stress increases and tempting, sugary foods are abound. When you’re in the thick of too much to do, it’s easy to forget that making time to work out actually increases productivity. Hang up posters reminding members that this is the case, and reach out via email with similar messaging. A great social media campaign would be one that features brief videos of clients who come regularly despite their hectic schedules—hearing them explain how gym-time makes work-time easier could help motivate members who feel stuck in the grind.
Consider extending your hours for the season. Then, if you’re able to do so, widely and proudly advertise your extended hours.
If possible, have your instructors or trainers develop abbreviated workouts. Give these a snappy name, something like Twenty-Minutes-In-and-Out. Again, advertise heavily: Let everyone know that you’ve got a new program created specifically to address the trouble we are all having right now, in making time to exercise. High-intensity interval training workouts are a relevant thing to plug right now: They’re still receiving attention for their dramatic results and the health benefits they produce, and they’re perfectly suited to short workouts.
Finally, craft a message specifically for members whose records indicate they haven’t made it in for a while. If you have a fitness concierge, have him or her send the message personally, with an invitation to call and discuss any scheduling difficulties clients might be facing. Offer to help devise a plan. You won’t hear from everyone, and there may well be a client or two who disappears and never renews. Chances are though, you’ll reach at least a handful who will feel grateful for you reaching out, and who will re-apply themselves with new vigor. Now get to work.

Healthier Planet, Healthier You

Healthier Planet, Healthier You

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I’ve talked about the Green Sports Resource Directory in this space before. Created by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, it’s a collection of online resources designed to help sports facilities, leagues, and college and university teams reduce their carbon footprints. With inspiring success stories and links to organizations devoted to helping sports-oriented businesses make environmentally sound decisions, the website illustrates the benefits of greening sports. It also links to tools that can help facilities and teams track and control their energy consumption, like EPA’s Energy Star Portfolio manager, and to lists of products that perform well and are cost efficient—while also being safer for the environment.
Bottom line: It’s a great resource, it can save you money, and it helps make a better planet. Already, sports outfits across the country are making a commitment to protect the health of employees and clients and to improve the environment. The Seattle Mariners have used energy efficiency techniques to reduce their electricity consumption by over 90 percent—and to reduce energy costs by $50,000 per year. Brooklyn’s Barclay’s Center earned a LEED Silver certification by the U.S. Green Building council last year, and it has challenged fans to “be green” by using public transit, recycling, and reducing paper waste associated with tickets. In West Columbia, South Carolina, a former dump and landfill site was transformed into a recreational area, with a mini-golf course, a driving range, a practice golf course, a ball park, and—I love this detail—a recycling center.
Chances are your facility, league, or team already has taken some steps toward becoming greener. You reuse, reduce, and recycle; you advise your employees not to print out emails unnecessarily, and you communicate with your clientele virtually more than on paper; you choose machines that use energy efficiently. But probably you can take your efforts further. Can you invest in solar energy? (I know a horseback-riding training center in upstate New York with state-of-the-art stables, a vast indoor arena, 34 acres of beautiful land, and a big, old-fashioned farmhouse, where, because of solar panels on the roof, the electricity bill comes to $19 per month.) Can you use products that conserve energy? Can you clean without harmful chemicals? Can you boost efforts to get everyone in your facility—managers, employees, fans, members, and clients alike—wasting less and conserving more?
Moreover, can you effectively advertise your efforts? Because in addition to saving money and making the world safer, operating a greener business can attract the attention and loyalty of consumers whose concern about climate change and environmental health lead them to make decisions based on green practices. Want new members, customers, or clients? Reduce your energy consumption and let everyone know you’ve done so.

Back to School: Lessons About Looking Forward

Back to School: Lessons About Looking Forward

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Fast Company recently ran an article entitled “A Look Inside the Most Insane College Gyms.” By “insane,” the editors presumably meant equipped with perhaps unnecessary but totally envy-inducing features, such as Louisiana State University’s lazy river in the shape of the letters L, S, and U, for students to float on; Auburn University’s 45-person paw-print shaped hot tub and 20-foot poolside climbing wall; both institutions’ 1/3-mile running tracks, the longest college rec center tracks in the nation (Auburn’s is corkscrew-shaped and winds throughout the rec center building, pictured above; LSU’s is tiger-striped and loops around a rock-climbing wall).
Other features at recently constructed college gyms include ropes and ledges for ascending to the second floor, a skateboard-friendly plaza design (a compromise at Utah State University, after skateboard-friendly walls were deemed impractical), rooftop gardens, and the inclusion of functional training equipment. Under discussion at some universities but not yet incorporated are hot yoga rooms and indoor/outdoor tracks, on which a student could run an indoor loop, head outdoors for fresh air or a nice view, and then follow the track back into the building. Such a structure would include a thermal lock to prevent cold air/hot air exchange.
Now, I’m not saying you should spend millions of dollars refurbishing your facility to incorporate similar features, but I am suggesting that it’s worthwhile to consider the principles behind some colleges’ new “insane” designs, and perhaps to apply some of those principles.
For example, a big catalyst for the over-the-top designs is competition: LSU openly tried to outdo Auburn, its Southeastern Conference rival, when it designed its rec center. Schools try to better each other in the gym department because students often make enrollment choices based on the perceived quality of gym offerings. One recent Purdue University graduate told Fast Company that he chose Purdue partly because he liked that its gym had more options and better hours than the gyms at other universities he considered. The lesson? How your facility compares with others matters.
Another catalyst is envisioning the future. Colleges and universities know that any major rec center renovation or construction plans they dream up now won’t be used until kids currently in eighth grade make their way to higher ed. They need to be forerunners in design trends, and they need to build something flexible enough that it can remain appealing for decades. The lesson? Think not in terms of the now, but in terms of the future. What will customers and members want five, ten, fifteen years down the road? What can you build now that can morph into the next big thing?
A third catalyst is motivating exercisers to push harder. Gyms used to be dark, dank, box-shaped structures with Nautilus equipment and not much else. You couldn’t exactly call their environments inviting. Colleges and universities are looking for ways to make their spaces inviting, to make students want to go to the gym and stay there, to see if they can inspire gym-goers to work out for fifteen minutes longer. With soaring ceilings, light-filled spaces, yoga decks, climbing walls, novelty features (like that “LSU”-shaped floating pool), and other attributes that convey a sense of fun and freedom, institutions are having more and more luck drawing members of their communities to the gym and keeping them there — one recent study found that only 15 percent of students finish their first year of college without ever using the rec center, while roughly 50 percent never use career planning, financial advising, or academic tutoring services. The lesson? The space you offer can invite new members in and encourage retention.
The biggest take-away from all of this? Pay attention to what colleges and universities are doing in their rec centres. Look at photos for inspiration, and keep tabs on new developments. Higher education institutions are at the forefront of gym design — and in a few years their students are going to be young professionals seeking gyms in the real world, and their standards are going to be high.

Healthcare

New Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Commission Seeks Collaborators

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By now, you’ve probably heard of the report recently released by the Vitality Institute, a New York-based organization made up of leaders in both the public and private sectors. Their main focus is to strengthen the evidence base of what works and what doesn’t in health promotion and disease prevention. The report, Investing in Prevention: A National Imperative, offers recommendations on these topics. A particular recommendation that has people talking is one that some may find controversial: Companies should report their employee health metrics just as they report their financial earnings.
Eighty percent of non-communicable diseases could be prevented, the report states. Preventing these diseases by 2023 could save the United States between $217 billion and $303 billion per year—about five percent to seven percent of annual healthcare spending. How do you prevent the diseases? By collecting data on individuals’ health profiles, identifying who might be at risk, and presumably then encouraging healthy habits.
Any time an individual’s private data is collected, it’s controversial. But the report seems to argue that health-related data isn’t merely private—the information that it contains could reveal ways to help strengthen society at some of its most fundamental levels. “The consequences of non-communicable diseases have short- and long-term effects by forcing individuals to exit the workforce prematurely due to their own poor health, or to care for ill relatives,” the report states. “Lower productivity and higher absenteeism, combined with soaring costs of treatment, impede innovation and crowd out productive investment in education and research and development.” In light of that, the Vitality Institute argues, it’s imperative that we know the state of health of America’s employees.
Why should you care about all this? The commission that put together the Vitality Institute’s report represents high-powered public- and private-sector organizations, such as Microsoft Corp., IBM, AARP, Humana, Johns Hopkins University, Qualcomm, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. These organizations have promised to carry out four initiatives meant to revolutionize the prevention of diseases and the promotion of health in the United States. To launch these initiatives, the commission is seeking collaborators — and what businesses are better positioned to collaborate than gyms, health clubs, fitness centres, and sports centres, which already work toward disease prevention and health promotion? Now is the time to get involved.
In addition to building a Corporate Health Leaders Program comprising evidence-based workplace health promotion training courses for small, medium, and large employers, the commission also plans to “convene a workshop on ethical, legal, and social issues with respect to the use of data collected by personal prevention technologies.” Another initiative aims to strengthen leadership and advocacy through networks. All in all, these are sweeping ideas that could have a huge impact on the future of fitness in this country. That’s where you come in. And here’s an interesting idea for you: What if your company were one of the first to voluntarily begin reporting employees’ health metrics? You’d sure get noticed.

Energy saving

You'll be Green with Savings & Sustainability

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Ah, summer. I love winter’s snow, I’m a sucker for the gardens of spring, and fall contains what will always be my favorite holiday (Halloween, of course), but for me summer is hands-down the best season of all. I love the salad-eating, outdoor-exercising, blazing hot energy of it all—the swimming, the relaxation, the air-conditioning.
I know that last item is problematic, and it’s part of a much larger issue. Air-conditioning creates a huge carbon footprint, and if employed without regard to sustainability and energy conservation, it can contribute devastatingly to environmental destruction. However, from a fitness or sports facility perspective, it’s indispensable. Yet, it’s not just summertime air-conditioning that creates challenges. Lighting, energy consumption, heating, material waste—all of these issues affect how you run your facility year-round, how much money you save or spend, and your impact on the environment.
One way to tackle all of these issues at once is to push your facility to achieve LEED certification. Being LEED—or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—certified means meeting certain standards in energy savings, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and CO2 emissions reduction. The cost of designing and constructing a building that meets such standards is high, as is the cost of improving existing buildings. Maintaining LEED-certified facilities also carries costs. But in the end, the savings associated with LEED-certification, financial and otherwise, make it more than worthwhile. So how do you go about achieving it?
First, adopt a “going green” mindset. Demonstrate your facility’s commitment to creating an environmentally sound space by getting all employees on-board with the notion. It’s crucial that your management team understands the specific goals and considers LEED-related issues in all decision-making processes; if you have a stated company mission and can make LEED-compliance part of it, all the better. Equally important is that your sales team recognizes the power of LEED as a lever for selling your brand. Potential members and customers will appreciate the knowledge that joining your club or attending your practice facility or venue helps minimize environmental impact, and in a competitive market, such a factor can be a crucial selling-point.
Next, to cover the considerable costs of building a new LEED building or bringing an existing one up to speed, consider gaining sponsorship or embarking on a partnership. Local waste companies looking to promote their recycling programs, cleaning companies that market green products, municipal agencies launching new fitness agendas, and businesses with specific, health-related objectives—these are just a few categories from which to seek out sponsors or partners. To find one that’s right for you, you’ll need to do some research, identify the needs and wants of potential partners, and design proposals that meet those needs and wants. Any proposal you come up with should detail how the image, mission, values, and/or green initiatives of the sponsor or partner align with those of your organization and highlight the value of the alignment.
Finally, think both big and small. Reconfiguring your facility to meet LEED standards is thinking big, and it’s a crucial step that involves a good deal of research, commitment, and investment. You also want to make simple changes that might be tiny in and of themselves, yet, add up to a big change, contributing to an environmentally sound approach to running your facility. Install recycling containers next to trash cans. Replace old drinking fountains with newer ones that allow for bottle refills. Consider ways you might be able to buy locally, stocking your juice bar with fruit from nearby farms and getting supplies from companies in your city or neighborhood. Offer discounts at your café for customers who bring their own drinking containers. Tie messages about personal health into ones about the health of the planet. Every little effort makes a difference, and will help make your facility a leader—year-round—in the sustainability movement.

The Right Hire For Your Gym

The Right Hire For Your Gym

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If you’re a fan of reality television, or even if you’re not, you have probably heard about the recent episode of Inside Job that featured New York’s David Barton Gym. Inside Job’s premise is that a company seeking to fill a position agrees to let the show’s producers select three candidates. Those candidates live together for a week and undertake challenges that supposedly reveal their worthiness for the job. A fourth person also lives in the house, someone already employed by the company who presents himself or herself as another candidate for the position. That person is the insider, reporting back to the CEO about the candidates and choosing one of them to recommend.
Well, that’s one way to hire an employee. For those of us who don’t have the opportunity to get to know job candidates quite so intimately before we hire them, we need other approaches. Since so many staff positions at a fitness center or sports facility involve direct interaction with members and clients, it’s crucial to hire carefully. Moreover, hiring is an expensive process; you want to get a good return on your investment.
What can you do to ensure you’re hiring well? To begin with, craft an excellent, clear, and precise job description. The more specific your description, and the more explicitly you define what you’re looking for, the better your chances of finding appropriate candidates. If you need a marketing person with social media experience, don’t just put, “Five years marketing experience”. It’s better to write, “Experienced marketing professional with social media expertise.” Also, be sure to stick in a few words that convey the sort of work ethic you’re looking for. If you want to scare off potential loafers, then change that wording to “Dedicated, experienced marketing professional with social media experience, a can-do attitude, and the willingness to stick it out when things get tough.”
Once you’ve collected your applications and narrowed the pool down to a handful of candidates, line up your interviews. Let me stress on the word “handful”: At this point, you don’t want to bring in too many people. Start with your top three or four choices; if you can’t find what you’re looking for among them, you can always call in others.
No doubt you’ve conducted interviews before, so you know the drill. Still, there’s one thing that’s easy to forget: Interviews are not effective if you’re focusing only on the science behind them — the questions you should and shouldn’t ask, how you read a résumé, what answers a candidate gives to your questions. More effective is to focus on the art of interviewing. This means paying attention to how a candidate answers your questions more than what they say. Did you get an answer — but not to the question you asked? Were there inconsistencies in the candidate’s replies? What was the candidate’s body language saying, what were the unconscious reactions and gestures? These will help you better understand who the person is (rather than just what he or she has done).
Once you make an offer, be prepared to negotiate. Any candidate worth hiring is probably going to come to you with a counter-offer. Remain open to the offer. Often, it reflects what the potential employee truly thinks he or she is worth. You might not be able to meet the counter-offer, but you might gain some clues about what alternative offers the candidate might be willing to accept. If you really want the person, you’ll have to find a way to make him or her happy.
Which brings me to my final point: Keep your employees happy. The gym and sports industries by nature face high turnover (how about a reality TV show that addresses that fact?). When you’ve invested the time, money, and energy to hire the right candidate, you want to do everything you can to make sure he or she stays. Create an open, warm workplace that makes relationship-building a priority. Recognize and reward good work. Consider perks such as tuition reimbursement, free lunches, and employee-of-the-month programs. The investment in human capital is worth it.

Fill Positions And Keep Them Filled

Fill Positions And Keep Them Filled

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There’s a particular kind of frustration that all business owners have experienced: You spend time and money searching for the perfect employee. You make a promising hire, invest valuable resources in training, and finally breathe a sigh of relief — and then your employee moves on. So how do you fill positions and keep them filled?

At fitness centres and sports facilities, certain positions are especially hard to keep staffed. Over on the IHRSA blog, three fitness/sports center owners recently answered questions about the positions they’ve repeatedly had difficulty filling. For Telos Fitness Center in Dallas, Texas, the trickiest position is the front desk. “By nature, [it’s] entry-level and offers competitive, but minimal, hourly pay and ‘front line’ responsibilities,” says Brent Darden, the center’s owner/general manager. At Riverside Health Club in Mount Vernon, Washington, owner Karen Westra has found the facilities manager position most challenging to fill. Joe Cabibbo, owner and general manager of Odyssey Athletic Center in Waldwick, New Jersey, struggles with personal trainers leaving because they lack skills to market their services.

Whatever position you struggle to keep properly staffed at your own facility, there are some general steps you can take to improve the situation. First, take the time to analyze all of the tasks that the position in question is responsible for. You might find that you’re consistently hiring people with the wrong experience, or that the tasks can be split between two positions, making it easier to keep the troublesome one filled. That’s what Westra discovered when she sat down and listed out everything a facilities manager would have to do in order to keep up with preventative maintenance demands at her club. The solution? Hire a facilities assistant, and consult regularly with the facilities manager about which tasks can be delegated.

Next, rather than investing resources in a particular individual, invest in systems and training. This approach works for Darden with the font desk job. “We have found the best solution is to invest heavily in the systems and training of front desk staff in order to maintain consistent service, despite frequent turnover,” he says. In other words, even if you have to make a new hire for the front desk position, or any position, every six or nine months, having seamless systems in place and a rigorous training program will ensure that members’ day-to-day experience doesn’t change much.

Finally, for personal trainer positions or similar ones that require self-promotion, make sure your hires are equipped to engage in self-promotion. As Cabibbo puts it, “Regardless of the extent of their certification, personal trainers seem to have difficulty applying their knowledge in a marketing/sales aspect.” Where certification programs fail, you might have to be prepared to teach. Keep your coaches, personal trainers, and perhaps other employees up-to-speed on the best ways to attract and keep clients. You’re the one who will benefit in the end, because you won’t have to worry about replacing the employees who aren’t keeping themselves busy enough.