Tired of instructor turnover or lack of vested interest in your club?
One of the biggest challenges for modern fitness center managers is instructor turnover. Usually, the cost of the instructor leaving the studio is very high. Instructors either take a large number of clients with them or, more important, leave many unsatisfied clients in that transition period as clients await, or get used to, a new instructor or schedules. Many clients decide to leave a studio and do something else during such transitions, which usually do not go very smoothly. As a result, there are numerous losses that the fitness center must sustain, in addition to the cost of finding and training a replacement.
How to keep instructors motivated and interested.
One of the solutions for increasing instructor retention is to improve their motivation. Aside from the financial benefits, what else can you do in order to get your instructors to want to work in your club? First, let us ask what instructors are looking for. To begin, they are looking for optimized schedules, since they are losing a lot of money and time whenever there is a slight change in scheduling. When clients cancel or otherwise request schedule changes, this creates many open slots in the schedule and significantly affects both the instructor’s and the club’s earnings. Second, instructors want to grow professionally and to constantly develop their skill set. Nowadays, that is even more important – as fitness instruction is emerging as a true profession rather than a hobby or a side job. There is growing educational and infrastructural support for fitness instructors, managers, and program directors. One of the key benefits that instructors appreciate is professional development. If you provide instructors with professional development, with only a minimum investment, you will be able to keep instructors motivated, diligent, and feeling secure while working in your club!
Effective fitness program management is key!
Now that you have decided to take steps to increase instructor retention by improving the scheduling system and offering professional development, how do you integrate this into your fitness programs? At the same time, how do you manage such programs in such a way that your clients get a double incentive to stay with your club by receiving the highest quality of services and having their schedules accommodated in the most optimized way? After all, that is what your clients want! The solution is to look at the needs of clients AND instructors simultaneously, and to design and manage your fitness programs in such a way so that both clients and instructors stay satisfied. In other words, clients receive the best fitness results, instructors receive the most professional development, and the scheduling works best for everybody, allowing your club to allocate resources in the most effective way!
What happens if you miss the train?
It is important to understand that the fitness industry is undergoing an enormous transformation. Clients require more service and more attention, instructors require more stability and professional development, and the competition is growing. Nowadays, no fitness club can position itself as “the only club in town.” The longer you delay in starting to work on designing fitness programs that satisfy both clients and instructors, the harder it will be in the future to improve and adjust to industry changes. Losing clients means that they will go next door or consider a completely different activity. Losing instructors may be even worse, since this will not only create a disruption in your fitness programs and revenue, but may entirely wipe out the revenue source and competitive standing of certain programs. Also, even for existing instructors and clients, scheduling inconsistencies alone may cause significant losses. On the other hand, getting on that train now means having more clients, instructors, programs and more efficient scheduling, faster. The benefits vary from club to club, but nobody will argue about the importance and urgency of making these changes. For some, this may mean the difference between success and failure.
What to do next and how to start.
A good starting point is to think about short-term and long-term goals. What areas of program management require immediate improvement? Have you recently lost instructors or clients? Do you know why? You definitely need to design your programs in such a way that the relationship among you, the clients, and the instructors is as close as possible. Only then will you be able to truly control what is going on with your business, your clients, instructors, and fitness programs.
Take a close look at your situation and see how much your business can grow in the short term and sustain this growth in the long term if you invest in solutions for the management of your fitness programs, and your client and instructor relationships!
Mark Lubarsky is the Founder and CEO of CollabFitness Corporation. He is also founder and director of Pilates Family, Inc. He can be contacted at 866.846.4488 or by email at focus-group@collabfitness.com.
