Be smart about scheduling. Once you have more
employees, don’t be afraid to give them more hours, said
Choquette. Corporate expects that all clubs log between 350 and
400 hours per week, but Anchor Management often exceeds that
by roughly 80 hours, especially in the winter and spring or if a
promotion is about to expire.
“Planet Fitness® has a schedule for you to follow, but you can
really beef up that schedule,”said Choquette.“We rotate our staff
to keep the payroll as low as we can, but at the same time, we
want to make sure there are enough people.”
Smarter scheduling can be as simple as asking people who
walk in for a tour to wait five minutes. This way there may be
more people on a tour, which can contribute to the atmosphere
of the club and at the same time maximize your employee’s time.
“We’ve honed down our busy times and look at staff through the
ABC software,”said Choquette.“We really try to promote our clubs
when we have high usage.”
Meetings, meetings, meetings. Having enough
employees working enough hours won’t simply guarantee that
your company will have exceptional customer service. Everyone
needs to be on the same page about what their club’s goals are
and how they, as a team, are going to reach them. This can often
get lost in the daily grind when a general manager is the only one
aware of the goals.
To solve this problem, Anchor Management increased the
number of meetings its employees must attend. Once a month
the company holds a managers meeting where it provides HR
training followed by an operations presentation that covers same-store sales. The
manager meetings also address any
house-cleaning items, as well as set up
any goals the specific clubs have for the
month.
On top of this, employees participate
in mini huddles on a weekly basis and daily
group meetings. The daily meetings, called 5 by 5’s,
are designed to keep team members focused on
certain goals and aware of those of others.“We say, ‘If you can do
five things that will increase your membership satisfaction, what
would those be?’”explained Choquette.“Then someone will say,
‘Well, I’ll clean the bathrooms, the locker rooms and the 360
room,’ and someone else will say, ‘I’m going to wipe down the
treadmills and bus the Hydromassage room.’”
The meetings are typically held at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., and
employees are encouraged to complete their five tasks by 5 p.m.
These goals are set on top of traditional checklists to make sure
nothing is left undone.
Rethink how you train. Yet another process that Anchor
Management utilizes to make sure they have top-notch staff is
to cross train. The company now requires each manager to put
time in at another location.“They can get a better feel and a better
sense of how they belong to the bigger picture,”said Choquette.
“If they go to a different location and say, ‘Gee, they do it a little bit
Continued on page 34
Macrolease Corporation
A Bank Rhode Island Company
Planet Fitness
Financing
Get the funds you need
to grow your franchise
Equipment Leases & Loans
Build-Out Financing
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For more information, please contact Sal Venuto
800.645.3535 ext. 22104 I [email protected]
www.macrolease.com
GearedUp | 2016 Issue 3
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