How Fitness Companies Utilize Connecteam To Streamline Daily Operations

The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that fitness trainers and aerobics instructors will grow by 15% through 2028. This is actually higher than the average for all jobs across all industries. 

Knowing that employment in the gym and fitness industry is only going to grow and that the market demand is strong, there are some challenges that must be acknowledged and addressed. 

What are some challenges fitness companies face? For starters, the competition is fierce. Especially considering the pricing wars, personal trainers, at-home workouts, online and mobile training, and wearable technology like watches. All of these challenges are competition-based, of course. However, with a strong work ethic, a smart business plan, engaged and well-trained staff, and a unique offering, your fitness business can stand out from the competition. 

And what about the challenges concerning managing your own employees? Ah, now that’s another matter to tackle. For starters, you need your trainers to be well-trained not just in what fitness technique they teach but also to provide the best customer service. In addition, effective communication, retention, scheduling classes, payroll tracking, and so on. 

This is why many are turning to automated software and Connecteam offers the only all-in-one, mobile-first solution to help streamline daily operations for fitness companies. 

Connecteam’s all-in-one employee app makes it easier for fitness companies to streamline their business operations and effectively manage their teams and trainers. We spoke to the countless fitness companies who are currently benefiting from Connecteam’s features to learn more about their use cases. Here’s what they told has been the most beneficial:

Communicating with trainers and coachers is difficult to achieve in a dynamic environment but is very important. Fitness companies like to leverage a variety of communication methods and best practices to keep the team up-to-date and engaged:

• Realtime push notifications and updates: for both formal and informal announcements. From day-to-day training and operations and all the way to share updates and announcements, and to employee acknowledgment and recognition.
• Chat groups and channels: to streamline day-to-day communication easily and efficiently.
• Employee directory: making it easy to find the contact details of team members, vendors, landlines, and other 3rd parties with full permission management.

If you’re looking for more information on how to streamline communication and engagement, this blog will help answer all those questions and more. 

When running fitness locations, there are a lot of day-to-day activities that take place. From filling club opening checklists to reporting a maintenance call or documenting an incident that took place. 

We noticed that digital forms checklists and reports are commonly used by our fitness customers. Here are some popular examples of how those workflows help automate the information flow and make such processes more structured and organized:

• Club opening/closing checklist
• End of day trainer report
• Workout room cleaning checklist
• Incident report
• Repair order ticket
• Expense reimbursement form
• Service provider service summary form
• Coaching session performance review
• Customer complaint form

All entries submitted by employees are always digitally logged and are automatically forwarded to the relevant stakeholders.

One of the features used most by fitness companies in the schedule. The schedule allows an easy and quick way to plan and distribute the shifts to all trainers and coaches. That way the trainers have all the information they need at all times, and if there are any changes they are automatically notified.

Different companies use it in different ways – some require trainers to acknowledge and accept each shift sent to them, others require trainers to check-in and out of shifts or to complete tasks that are related to shifts and by doing so tracking progress and status of all the different shifts in one place.

And this is how it all looks for the trainers, all the information they need in one place:

While some fitness organizations have an employe time tracking software in place, we find that often they take advantage of Connecteam’s inherited time tracking capacity. The time tracking capability is available both on mobile or from a kiosk app (iPad/tablet). In both cases, you can make sure the team is where they say with a geo-fencing limitation that doesn’t allow to clock in outside of the designated area.

The time clock makes it easy to track time, to later understand how resources were allocated and how many hours spent on each activity, and of course to export the hourly data for conducting payroll using Connecteam’s easy integration with QuickBooks Online and Gusto.

In-app training and onboarding are commonly used to provide employees with a great experience when they need to access training resources or to get acquainted with the organization. Since employee turnover is high, this is one of the most commonly used practices. While it differs a lot from one organization to the next, common practices include:

• Onboarding experience: introduction to the organization, sometimes a welcome note or a video from a senior person, information about what to expect during training and checklists for completion in the first week/month.
• Getting acquainted with protocols and procedures: employee handbook, training routines, schedules, benefits, and obligations, etc.
• Customer service and customer experience: ‘cheat sheet’, core principles, video examples on how to provide the best service.
• Tailoring plans for trainees: guidelines and things to emphasize, how to document the training plans, what’s important to remember and assess, etc.
• Equipment usage and maintenance: all the relevant PDFs, resources, etc.

Resources may defer from one company to the next depending on need, however, the ability to have a ‘mobile intranet’ is something most fitness companies take advantage of. Some common resource usually shared include:

1. The employee handbook
2. Subscriptions pricing information
3. Equipment guides
4. Code of ethics
5. Important contacts and vendors
6. Other policies

HR leverage Connecteam for additional capabilities beyond communication and employee engagement, but also for automating of process and for better control over workforce-related issues:

• Adding new employees: building upon the invite link to get all the user information directly from the club and updating the employee database.
• Recommendations: making it easy for the workforce to recommend friends for a position which helps increase their recruitment reach.
• Vacation/sick leave request management: users receive an automatic update if requests were denied or approved.
• Updating contact information: such as an address, name, phone number, email, bank account details, and so on.
• Employee satisfaction surveys or performance reviews.

Connecteam is used by fitness companies for compliance purposes. ‘Read and sign’ forms are common, as well as periodical refresher training courses. All documents are logged and automatically sent as a PDF copy to predefined email(s) that can be customized per each form, and users can export a summary report at any time.

Some examples of read and sign documents include:

1. Employee handbook acknowledgment
2. Sexual harassment policy
3. Incident findings report
4. Other read and sign documents.