OVERCOMING THE FITNESS INDUSTRY’S TOP CHALLENGE:

COMPETITION

Build Your Best Team & Encourage Client Retention

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OVERCOMING THE FITNESS INDUSTRY’S TOP CHALLENGE: COMPETITION

Build Your Best Team and Encourage Client Retention

T O P C O M P E T I T I O N I N T H E F I T N E S S I N D U S T RY

Today’s consumers have countless opportunities to get in shape. From full-service gyms to at-home fitness apps to studios dedicated to yoga, cycling, crossfit and more, the possibilities are practically endless. And each time a new fitness center opens or new app is developed, it poses a risk to your fitness center’s success and profitability.

With so many fitness options available, consumers need a good reason to stay loyal to one fitness brand – or they’ll just move on to the next available option down the road or at home. The most successful fitness businesses don’t see competition as a threat but embrace competition as an opportunity to make sure they’re providing the best customer experience possible.

When it comes to staying ahead of the competition, your employees are critical to a differentiated customer experience. In fact, 68 percent of gym members have stopped working with a personal trainer because of a poor experience, meaning hiring the best team possible should be one of your top priorities.

In this eBook, we’ll outline several tips to build the best team at your fitness franchise, and ways for your team to encourage member retention.

Full-Service Gyms Fitness Apps At-Home Videos

Yoga Cycling Crossfit

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BUILD A GREAT EMPLOYMENT BRANDWith so much competition to attract both employees and fitness customers, building out your employment brand is key to attracting the right employees and encouraging customer retention.

Your employment brand can ensure prospective candidates get excited about the possibility of working for your fitness business. It can also help you reach quality candidates who might not have otherwise been looking for a job – 84% of candidates would consider leaving their current company if another company with an excellent reputation or brand offered them a job.

Make sure you’re embracing the following elements as part of your overall employment brand:

In addition to helping you hire your best team, a top-notch employment brand and career site can help you attract new customers at your fitness center. When potential customers are researching new fitness centers to join and see you invest time in hiring the best personal trainers and group fitness instructors, they’ll be more inclined to sign up for a membership with you over the competition.

A Comprehensive List of Benefits: Determine what sets your fitness center apart – such as your company culture, reimbursement for training and certification, or an equipment allowance for personal trainers – and commu-nicate these benefits on your career site, in job descriptions and anywhere else candidates might see them.

Compelling Job Descriptions: A job description should get potential applicants excited about the possibility of working for your fitness business. Focus on what you have to offer – such as your overall benefits, company culture and company awards – as the job description is your chance to sell applicants on the role.

A Strong Career Site: The most engaged candidates take the time to research and apply to jobs through company career sites. Make sure your career site includes details on the workplace culture, career progression, and overall benefits to help top candidates see the opportunity your team offers.

Continuous Job Openings: Even if you don’t have an immediate opening, you should always have a few jobs posted on your career site. Continuous job openings show your center is successful and growing, and can help you capture strong, passive candidates when you least expect it.

A Defined Career Path: Today’s job seekers demand a clearly defined career path and if your career site doesn’t provide candidates with an understanding of career progression, they will find a competitor that does.

Employee Success Stories: Share positive employee testimonials or highlight employees who have risen through the ranks as it will enable applicants to see what it’s like to work at your fitness center firsthand.

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DIVERSIFY YOUR APPLICANT SOURCING CHANNELSThink about how your fitness business shares open roles. Some fitness businesses simply post the role on their career site or maybe post on 1-2 job boards. But having limited channels also limits the amount of quality applicants you’ll receive.

Instead follow a multichannel sourcing strategy that includes the following channels:

When you post jobs across multiple channels, make sure to continuously track your sourcing budget and measure your ROI by dividing the total costs of each channel by the number of quality applicants you receive. This will give you a cost per candidate, which is helpful for comparing different job boards and other networks that might have different pricing models. If certain job boards or channels do not result in quality candidates – or eventual hires – for your fitness center this is a clear sign you should reallocate your budget to another, more successful source.

Career Site:A compelling career site is often the top source for delivering quality candidates. Top candidates turn to career sites directly, as they’re deeply invested in their professional growth and want to better understand potential career opportunities and workplace culture.

National Job Boards:Applicants who don’t have specific employers in mind tend to do broader research to find out about new job openings using job boards such as LinkedIn and ZipRecruiter. With job boards, you can broadly distribute job openings to many applicants – but they might not be as engaged as other channels – which is why it’s beneficial to ultimately drive applicants back to your career site.

Industry-Specific Job Boards:There are many standalone job boards for specific industries. For businesses in the fitness industry, FitnessJobs.com and SportsCareerFinder.com might help you find quality candidates who are a better fit than a broad, national job board.

Social Media: Posting open roles on social media channels – such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram – enables you to reach a targeted pool of applicants who have likely already connected with or engaged with your business. Link back to your career site in all social postings, and encourage your employees to share the link with their networks.

Referrals: Top employees – and even your members – can become your best recruiters. Referrals enable you to receive recommendations from employees and customers you trust and can save your

business time and money. To encourage referrals, consider implementing an incentive program – such as cash incentives, discounted memberships and gift cards – and adjust the inventive based on the level of each open role.

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STREAMLINE YOUR HIRING PROCESSAn efficient hiring and talent management process can help your fitness center hire and onboard top candidates quickly. Follow an efficient, easily repeatable hiring process so candidates don’t get stuck waiting in certain hiring steps – or accept jobs from the competition while they’re waiting for you to move forward.

A proven hiring process will help your fitness business save time and money, and increase efficiency in the following ways:

Using an integrated hiring and talent management platform puts a significant amount of time back in your day that can be reallocated toward better running your fitness business. You also increase the quality of candidates and, ultimately, caregivers on staff by following a consistent process each time you make a hire.

Automatically review applicants:Rather than manually reviewing each applicant, an efficient hiring platform enables you to automatically weed out bad applicants. This is made possible by a prescreen survey, which is sent to each applicant as soon as they click “apply.” Concentrate on those applicants who receive high scores and move those with relevant experience the candidate stage for your team to review.

Easily Schedule and Complete Interviews: A unified hiring platform will not only help you efficiently set up and conduct interviews, but also create customized interview questions for each role that will assist in completing an objective, compliant assessment of each candidate.

Complete Skills Tests, Background and Reference Checks:Often often among the most time consuming steps in the hiring process, skills tests, background checks and reference checks can be streamlined using a hiring platform. Automatically send qualified applicants skills tests to gauge their first aid and other related skills. For reference checks, candidates provide the contact information and surveys are automatically sent to references. And for background checks, the candidate also submits simple personal information and the rest of the process is taken care of automatically. The platform also emails candidates if they need to take any action, and you’ll be notified as well.

Seamlessly Move From Hire to Onboarding: With unified hiring and talent management, you can begin the onboarding process once a candidate has accepted the job offer, by distributing and collect all necessary documentation, including I-9 and W-4 forms, before day one. This way, new employees don’t have to sit in the HR office the entire first day filling out paperwork.

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ENCOURAGE CUSTOMER RETENTIONIn addition to hiring the right personal trainers, group fitness instructors and front desk staff to create a great customer experience at your fitness center, it’s important to have a client retention strategy in place.

With many fitness centers offering first-time visitors a free week or month of membership, consumers often jump from free trial to free trial, rather than joining one fitness center for the long-term – unless they have a good reason to remain loyal.

Consider the following tips to encourage customer retention at your fitness center:

Incentivize Dedicated Members:To keep new fitness customers motivated to visit your fitness center, provide incentives for those who visit frequently. For example, if a member checks into your fitness center a certain number of times each month, consider rewarding the member with a free or discounted group fitness class or complimentary massage in your spa. The incentives will encourage members to frequently visit your fitness center and, ultimately, increase member retention.

Encourage Social Interaction:A unified hiring platform will not only help you efficiently set up and conduct interviews, but also create customized interview questions for each role that will assist in completing an objective, compliant assessment of each candidate.

Refer a Friend:Another option is to encourage “workout buddies” by implementing a referral program. Offer members the opportunity to refer friends in exchange for a free personal training session, discount on their monthly membership or another related incentive. When friends join your fitness center, your current members will be even more motivated to frequent the gym.

Collect Feedback:IHRSA found that while happy fitness clients tell four to five others about a positive experience, dissatisfied customers tend to tell nine to 12 others about a negative experience. This means you want to create the best experience possible or risk members sharing a

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BUILD YOUR BEST TEAM TODAY

With more than 34,000 fitness centers in the U.S. – and many fitness apps and at-home workouts available – competition for attracting and retaining both employees and members can be tough. But by following an efficient hiring process, you can build your best team, leading to long-term retention and profitability at your fitness center.

Get in touch to see how we can help your fitness center build a better team – see a demo today.

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