I often hear from gym owners that their staff members sometimes push back on extra tasks they’re told to do. This is often a sign that the bigger picture is misunderstood by staff. If you, as a gym owner, tend to get pushback or a lack of effort from your staff in the following areas, this blog is for you: 

• Your staff forgets to do a task at the end of their shift like cleaning bathrooms or wiping down mats.
• During breaks between teams or classes, your staff can usually be found checking their phones or in the staff room relaxing for a few minutes.
• You sometimes question if you’re hiring the wrong people or overpaying because you’re not seeing a solid ROI (return on investment) on your staff members.
• When someone calls in sick, your first reaction is, “I can just coach that class/team and save a few dollars by not staffing someone.”

These alone may not seem like signs of poor culture, but I can tell you it’s a slippery slope. If you question the value of any staff member in your gym, there is only one person to blame (and I’ll give you a hint … it’s not the staff member!)

Calculating the Cost of Idle Time

In my early years of owning a gym, I learned a lot of valuable lessons. The first was that the only way I’d get the true value out of my staff was if I set the bar high and trained them to regularly meet that level of expectation. I remember doing our finances for the week and seeing that we hadn’t quite brought in enough money for comfort; yet, in the 15-minute break between classes, my coaches would sit on their phones near their staff cubbies (which just happened to be right out in the open where parents could see 🤦‍♀️.) 

However, when I started diving more into business education, I realized I should calculate what it cost me to have staff on the clock for 15 minutes between classes several times throughout the night. Though it was much more affordable to employ part-timers back in 2013, I calculated that it was costing me hundreds of dollars each week. I had two options: I could either move my classes to a back-to-back schedule or I could start focusing on giving my staff tasks to do between their classes. 

Implementing Productive Breaks

For me, a hybrid of these two worked best. We moved classes by about 15 minutes to create a back-to-back schedule for anything we could. For those that couldn’t be moved for one reason or another, our staff were given chores like wiping down mats or checking bathrooms. Over the years, pay rates inevitably increased, and I began to learn about how to best manage staff. Instead of giving staff filler tasks, I trained them to do one of three things: 

1. 1. Recurring tasks: Staff began to take recurring tasks off my plate so I could spend my days focused on growing the business. Recurring tasks included things like pressing new member T-shirts, filing waivers and credit card authorization forms (those are now digital and automated for us), and helping with our leotard wholesale program. Recurring tasks are the #1 best thing you can systemize and the first thing you should train staff on. Once these tasks are off your plate, it’s unlikely someone will mess them up because they’re the same tasks repeated on a weekly basis.

• Retention tasks: This includes talking to parents of athletes who weren’t progressing, troubleshooting and providing homework cards, writing birthday postcards to our members, and checking the bathrooms. (After all, if you can’t keep your bathrooms clean, why would anyone believe you’re sanitizing your mats regularly?)

• Sales tasks: Today, my key staff members are some of the best sales people in the gym. They know the details of our programs and can help parents make good decisions on the transition from recreational to competitive programming. They also know the details of our birthday parties and can call those with upcoming birthdays, and they know about events coming up in the gym that their athletes might be interested in. 

Maximizing Return on Investment

When you invest money into a staff member, you should see a return far greater than their own paycheck. In fact, my standard is 2.5 times. So, if a staff member were to make $20 per hour, and they have a 15-minute break between classes, I want them to do a task that is likely to make the gym $12.50 in revenue. (Math below.)

$20 per hour x .25 hours (15 minutes) = $5 x 2.5x ROI = $12.50

It’s my job (and the job of my managers) to ensure that we’re not just keeping staff busy with filler tasks, but with tasks that are compatible with their skill set. For my tumbling director, that often means reviewing skills charts and calling the parents of athletes who are very close to the skills we’ll be working on at upcoming clinics. His goal within 15 minutes is to sell one to two registrations for an upcoming clinic. 

For a lower-level coach (maybe someone who has just been with us 90 days or so), they may spend 15 minutes between classes checking the bathrooms and greeting the parents and athletes of their upcoming class. If you’re not sure that “greeting” alone can make an impact, walk into Chick-fil-A and let me know about your experience. Then walk into a Subway attached to a gas station as a comparison. Greeting people shows them that you care about them. 

So, as you learn more about business and how to manage your staff, I’d encourage you to calculate the breaks your staff have between classes. Audit what they’re doing and whether it’s costing you money or making you money to have them on the clock. Most of my staff have a three to four hour shift. They’re not working eight straight hours where they need a meal break. Instead, most are coming in from 5-8 p.m. or 5-9 p.m. Their meal schedules are shifted just like yours and mine because they work evenings. So, calculate and let me know: Are your staff making you money or costing you money?