What’s one red flag of a failing business? When the staff no longer works as a team, but rather on their own goals and directives. It is often lost that what makes most companies successful is full staff integration and development.
Here at Gainesville Health and Fitness we make it very clear to all employees — from the management team to the kids’ club attendants — that the success of our company falls on three things:
- The success of the company as a whole.
- The success of the other departments.
- The success of our own departments/roles.
We recently had a team meeting with integration at the focal point. In our team meeting, we broke off into groups made up of individuals from each department. The group discussed how every department helped others, and made a list of any areas that needed improving upon.
The list was then compiled and placed on a grading scale, so that each month we could go back to those topics to see whether or not we needed more improvement in serving each other. I’m pretty sure I have mentioned before that at our clubs, we do not look at any of our staff less than any other group.
This all ties back to the overall culture of our clubs consisting of the following six aspects:
- A learning and challenging environment that develops leaders.
- An environment of teamwork.
- A system for appreciation and reward.
- Continuous improvement.
- Sharing knowledge.
- An uncommon level of interest to our physical environment.
It would be impossible for us to fulfill our culture focusing only on ourselves, and not having the trust and confidence of the rest of our team.
Adrian Antigua is the operations manager for Gainesville Health and Fitness in Tioga, Fla. Formerly a desk manager, Antigua is heavily involved in customer service and staff training. For questions on operations, e-mail Antigua at AdrianA@ghfc.com.
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Rachel Zabonick-Chonko is the editor-in-chief of Club Solutions Magazine. She can be reached at rachel@peakemedia.com.
