Recently, someone asked two questions about staff in one of our Next Gen groups: How do you maintain a consistent staff and positive work environment when employees are regularly calling out of work, affecting your ability to provide quality teams and practices? At the same time, what’s the defining line for being a ruthless employer that lacks flexibility? 

Cheer gyms need to operate like any other business, but so often they’re operating like unicorns instead. They’re providing less adequate systems to staff while expecting them to adhere to policies they wouldn’t encounter in any other position.

Understanding a New Generation’s Priorities

No one understands the importance of a consistent staff like a gym owner—myself included. However, today’s generation is looking for flexible work positions that are both enriching and financially viable. 

Step into their shoes for a moment. The majority of my staff are in their early 20s, and their final years of high school were during COVID. The structure they experienced early in their education went out the window when the pandemic hit, and it impacted them far more than you might expect.

They were taught that nothing mattered more than people. No job, education or activity—previously deemed “important”—was as important as protecting themselves and others. In addition, this generation was old enough to feel the true impact of isolation from school friends, teachers and teammates. Coming out of COVID, they realized just how important it was to have memorable experiences in life with friends and family. 

This was so important to people, in fact, that a large number of jobs went remote to offer employees flexibility while cutting costs. In the COVID and post-COVID years, I not only owned a gym, but I also owned Next Gen and a restaurant. I found that employees, both in my gym and in the restaurant, weren’t willing to miss out on important things in life for work—not when there were dozens of other positions that would pay similarly and offer more flexibility. Your staff wants to control their own time, and personally, I can’t blame them. 

My #1 hang up with coaching these days is the sacrifice. I, myself, struggle with missing out on fun things that occur on nights I’m scheduled to coach. COVID taught us that life is about more than just cheerleading. I believe the industry embraced that mentality for a period of time, but in the past year or two, I’ve seen some return to disillusion—reverting back the belief that this sport is all their staff and athletes should care about. 

Balancing Staff Needs With Consistency

Let me give some examples. I coach three teams this year, but a few weeks ago, I saw there were still some tickets for sale to see Jelly Roll, one of my favorite country musicians. I immediately looked up the details only to find it was on a practice night. 

Later that week, my foreign exchange student had a fun presentation at school where she’d teach about Italy. I missed this presentation the last two years with former students due to coaching, so I planned to attend this year. Thankfully it was scheduled for a Tuesday—my night off. But later the presentation was rescheduled to Wednesday—the night I coach and don’t have a solid assistant coach. So, yet again, I’d miss it. I had spent a lot of time helping my student prepare, and I was definitely disappointed. 

No matter how much you love your gym, your athletes, and coaching itself, there is a true pull for your time and energy between things you love. Day jobs and remote positions are significantly easier as the rest of the country is working at the same time. Plus, I’ve never seen a Jelly Roll concert scheduled for a Monday at 1 p.m. But missing activities in the evenings for work hits a little differently.

So my compassion definitely errs on the side of my staff when it comes to missing for events. In my early years, I’d get annoyed when athletes had to miss for school programs, art fairs and school sports. Today, I have enormous compassion, because I understand they’re just trying to do what they love and balance it all. Staff are no different.

I don’t want my staff to one day tell me they don’t want to coach next season simply because I couldn’t give them the night off once in a while to do the things they love. The person who originally posted these questions was likely dealing with this issue too—but there is no doubt the staff had begun to take advantage of this at her gym as well. 

Building Policies That Work for Everyone

It is possible to have a great staff who respect your need for consistency, while you respect their appreciation for all facets of life. Here is how to do that:

1. You need policies you’re willing to enforce. 

This past week, I was speaking to a gym owner who has some staff that need to go. The bad part is, she wasn’t willing to let them go because she wasn’t prepared to staff classes without them. Realistically, what good are policies if you’re not willing to enforce them and make those kinds of hard decisions? I told her those staff could simply quit. She could easily lose them at any point. They could be sick tomorrow, call in and quit or simply not show up. At least by enforcing her policies, the control would be in her hands. 

At my gym, if you don’t show up for a shift, and you don’t call first, you’re fired. There is little grace for this sort of irresponsibility. My staff knows and takes this seriously. We have a clock-in the system that offers an app on each person’s phone. The schedule is clear, consistent and always available. You can even set up a notification on your phone to remind you of shifts via push notification. I have staff who work at 6 a.m., so of course there is grace if someone were to oversleep, but that is rare because my staff takes their jobs seriously. We’ve instilled this mentality since day one. If you haven’t, it’s not too late. It is definitely a challenge to make a shift like this, and you’ll have to proceed delicately, but it’s absolutely possible.

2. You need staff who respect your mission. 

You can train someone all day with all the right systems and the best accountability, but if that person is wrong for your business, then you’re going to get frustrated quickly. I like welcoming people to our staff; it’s a team of great people who all buy in on the great things we’re trying to do at our gym. However, if we find that someone really isn’t sold on this gym or their position in the gym, it’s best to part ways early on. Because we’ve been so careful in hiring, I’ve only had to do this once in the past four or five years. 

Hire carefully, ask the right questions, follow the process we teach in Next Gen, and you’ll find that you likely will not be parting with new staff members. More often, you’ll find that as you begin to make changes in the gym, current staff members aren’t aligning; you’ll need to help them understand the big picture or ultimately, part ways.

3. Teach your staff how important their roles are. 

If your staff understands how important their roles are and takes them seriously, then it’s your role to make sure they enjoy their jobs. Here is the thing—if I suddenly wake up and find Chiefs tickets next to my bed, I won’t be there on Sunday afternoon for practices. It’s not likely you’ll have a lot of staff in this position, but every once in a while you will. You need to put yourself in their shoes. Pretend you’re not a gym owner. Pretend you have a job or school outside of the gym. 

No matter how important their roles are, life is short, and experiences are just as important for your coaches as they are for your athletes. Create parameters for occasions like this. If this happened to Melanie (who is a huge Chiefs fan), I can already think of how we’d solve the issue. She’d make sure her 8-count sheets were up to date, write me a lesson plan and I’d happily fill in for her. I can actually think of three coaches who would fill in for her (and I’m not overstaffed by any means, but I always have a back up plan in mind.) She plays a huge role at the gym, but I play a huge role in making sure she’s happy here.

As an employer, there is a balance between structure and flexibility. You’ll need to find that for your gym and be very clear with your staff on expectations. Be consistent, but know that if you’re not flexible enough, some of your best staff might one day look back and realize they missed major moments in their lives because of their commitment to work. Once they have a spouse or children of their own, that’s likely to cause friction in their lives—unless you can mitigate it by establishing solid workplace policies early on.