Cut Operational Costs in Six Steps

Danielle Orlick, the chief customer officer at NetGym, shares how gym operators and club owners can cut $50,000-plus in annual operational costs.

While gyms and studios are forced to adapt to the new reality of the hybrid fitness model, top of mind is also cutting operational costs, hiring high quality instructors and providing the best in-class or digital group fitness experience. The ability to scale resources, survive financially, and ensure everyone’s health and safety is critical. Unfortunately, there remains manual business processes that are limiting accelerated growth potential: subbing and teacher communication. Most studio and Group X managers spend 25% of their time on these specific activities, rather than instructor development, member experience and retention, and finding new talent.

Here are six activities that reduce manual work and establish the subbing and employee communication strategy:

1. Digitize sub policies.

Time to move away from communicating sub policies via email, text, google docs, and hoping instructors read it. Instead, digitizing, integrating, and automating unique sub policies directly into the sub creation and approval process, ensures the policy is automatically adopted, resulting in saved time and money.

2. Send and receive targeted requests.

Maintaining contact lists of who can teach what and where is extremely time consuming. More often than not, the contact lists end up outdated and mass emails/texts are being sent to teachers who aren’t eligible or worse, no longer employed. It’s frustrating for the staff, resulting in negative energy and unequal subbing opportunities. Instead, automatically send targeted sub requests based on what and where they’re eligible to teach.

3. Provide management visibility into all sub statuses.

Clubs typically have one manager per location overseeing disparate communication threads on various platforms trying to understand which classes have coverage and which ones still need a sub. To really save time, consolidate all requests and communication into one view so management can see all sub activity across various locations.

4. Approve subs while automatically updating the live schedule.

No matter the sub approval process, once a sub is confirmed, use automation to notify internal parties and update the live schedule for members to see who’s teaching in real time. Don’t let members show up to class only to see their favorite teacher not there.

5. Enable automated reminders and notifications.

Teachers know their permanent class schedule, but remembering when they’ve committed to subbing is a whole issue by itself. Managers spend hours reaching out one by one. Instead, send automated reminders in advance of the class being subbed.

6. Analyze sub data to make better decisions about the class schedule.

Today, most managers comb through disparate systems to evaluate how often an instructor is subbing out, how urgently they are requesting subs, and how often they are picking up classes. This requires cross checks and manual consolidation to determine subbing behavior. Instead, consolidate all of this data in one simple dashboard.

While operators are currently focused on digital offerings, retention, and acquisition, don’t forget about the instructors. Engagement and team chemistry is more important than ever during these times. The above activities give back up to 40 hours a month for your Group X and studio managers to focus on employee engagement and member retention.