Quality-based instruction is a growing trend.
Historically, the main purpose of Fitness Centers was to offer their clients a facility in which to exercise on their own. In that scenario, the role of instructor and instructional process was secondary. It was mainly to offer some additional guidance to the clientele as part of a value-added service. For the past several years, we have been observing a boom in “personalized fitness,” whether these are Pilates studios or other special- or general-purpose facilities, because the safety and benefits of exercising can be significantly increased or reduced to zero, based on the quality of the instruction.
Good instructor management practices are critical to your success.
Maintaining quality-based instruction is the most challenging task for fitness studio owners, program directors and instructor managers, considering the complexity of finding the right instructor, scheduling sessions at the right time, providing the best customer service and all the cost associated with it. What if the instructor is not available at the time the client prefers to have a session? What if the instructor is available, but he/she may be not the best match for the client? What if it takes more than one instructor in order to achieve the best results as well as to satisfy the scheduling requirements?
The combination of the above factors can significantly affect client satisfaction and retention, your studio revenues and operating costs, as well as your competitive standing in the local market. On the other hand, instructors want to receive maximum satisfaction from their job, including a track record of satisfied customers and plenty of professional development.
As a fitness studio owner, manager or program director, it is your responsibility to provide uninterrupted quality service to your clients. But how can you do that if tomorrow the long-time instructor quits – taking a big portion of the clients with him/her and leaving the remaining clients unhappy? Is it possible to minimize turnover and make such transitions transparent to your clients and your budget?
After all, how can you maintain the good name of your organization and have clients join your studio because they like YOUR program offerings as well as the quality of YOUR instructional programs, and not just because they like a particular instructor who works at your facility?
Collaboration-based instruction management is a key!
The right answer is to enable effective and efficient collaboration between instructors. That would increase the client and instructor retention rate, your revenues, and your business’s market value, while reducing unnecessary costs due to various mistakes. It would also increase the confidence of the clients as well as instructors to make any commitment with you, as your club will look professional.
Ability to make the instructors and other staff collaborate affects your business’s bottom-line and should become the core of your business model.
Once you have decided to enable collaboration in your facility, you cannot just say: “Let’s collaborate” and forget about all your problems. Implementing a collaborative approach is much more difficult than coming to understanding its purpose. It gets even more complex if you consider the specifics of your fitness discipline, for example: Pilates. Every good Pilates school encourages a variety of exercises and instructors, however this variety can become harmful if not managed properly.
Define and enforce the right instructor training, streamline your instruction processes, and increase the effectiveness and quality of your instructional programs.
These are not trivial tasks, and they require time and effort. However, once you’ve organized your processes, you will have a strong team of professionals and you will be able to demonstrate it to your clients as well as to your instructors. Now, you can achieve anything, including creating highly competitive programs; reducing operating cost due to mistakes; more efficiently organizing your schedule, and gaining the revenue in areas where you used to lose it!
Trends are changing. Act now to get the most benefit!
If you’ve decided to improve your instructor management practices by enabling collaboration, then NOW is the best time to do it! While the industry is lowering its standards by making it easier to get certifications for instructors, there is a growing demand in quality-based instruction.
Quality is what your clients want to pay for and what your instructors want to demonstrate.
If you maintain and lift your organization’s standards, you will help to preserve the credibility of your business as well as the entire industry. As a result, you will get more clients AND instructors who want to join YOUR fitness center in YOUR fitness discipline. The sooner you can demonstrate the competitive strength of your instruction process, the more benefits you will enjoy!
Mark Lubarsky is the Founder and Director of Pilates Family, Inc. He can be contacted at 866.343.4477, or by email at focus-group@pilatesfamily.com.
