Lindsey Calof, an industry consultant, shares the importance of creating leadership paths for personal trainers at your facility.
Personal training turnover is high. As a fitness manager, keeping coverage for clients is always in the back of your mind.
Due to new opportunities since the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s easy for trainers to get excited about what they could do in place of in person training. The truth is, they can sell their services anywhere. And while this is a real picture of the state of the state, do trainers want to work in their homes creating content?
There are plenty of reasons why a trainer would want to work within a gym or studio setting:
- Value in community and working with people.
- The training experience is better in person, and commonly accepted at a higher price point.
- Not all trainers want to — or need to — be business owners.
Now that we’re feeling better about the positives, our task at hand lies in retention. Even if they love their time working with clients, your best trainers hold most value in growth and opportunity. Your job is to leverage the value in personal growth and connect it creating simple leadership paths in your own business.
The tangible ways to you can create more leaders include:
- Building a new revenue stream.
- Sharing business metrics.
- Expand on your hiring process.
- Offer a learning program stipend.
New Revenue Projects
A new stream of revenue, that’s built and executed in part by staff, is my favorite method to keep a promising team member thriving while also continuing to grow your programs.
A few examples to expand upon:
- Products for your current members:
- Recovery services.
- Endurance event coaching.
- Digital training.
- Member challenges.
- Health coaching/behavior change services.
- Online assets to sell publicly.
- Online courses
- Tools such as playbooks, training plans or video content.
- Sourcing community partnerships with businesses who compliment your programs to easily solve more problems for your members.
You can reward your best people with a new challenge and faith in their future performance. Not to mention, finally get a new idea out there making more money for your business.
Share Your Metrics and Bring Trainers into the Business
This is universal, people care more about their daily work when they know the whole story along with the impact each of them can make. Teach your team about metrics you’re measuring as a leader and ask them for feedback on how improve.
Methods to make it happen:
- Schedule a monthly download meeting to talk about business performance.
- Share the numbers you track along with long and short term business goals.
- Teach on your company KPI’s and what impacts them.
- Be vulnerable. What excites you and where do you have uncertainties?
Include Trainers in your Hiring Process
This means more than a simple meeting of potential candidates. Bring your team into your process and how you make decisions. What questions are most important to you? Ask them to create at least two interview questions to include in your process moving forward. Even if you disagree in opinions, it’s a great opportunity to have leadership discussions within real time learning. It also showcases your trust and your commitment to maintaining the culture.
Provide a Learning Program with Stipend
Continuing education is often a burdensome expense for trainers. And I will be honest, this isn’t a direct investment in loyalty and retention, but it does show your team that you want to be supportive of their growth. Provide an amount you’re most comfortable with. If you have pause with the financials, I understand, and I can almost guarantee it will cost you way less than hiring and sourcing in the long run.
Yearly examples per employee:
- One certification of choice.
- $500 toward education broadly, this can go in many directions.
- Team selects a certification or course to complete together, along with a group study.
Overall, many of us feel the struggle of keeping personal trainers on board in today’s climate. However, leveraging personal growth and connecting it to leadership paths in your business can help trainers see the value at working at your facility, rather than on their own.
