Why Employees Leave Companies.
One of the greatest challenges that most fitness companies face is employee retention. The fitness industry has struggled for many years in this area of retention with Personal Trainers having the highest turnover rates. It has been reported that the industry has an 80% annual turnover of personal trainers with sales and support staff having a 60% annual turnover. Learning why attrition occurs in the industry is important to understanding how to fix this major problem.
Employee retention is crucial for fitness companies, as it affects customer satisfaction, reputation, revenue, and competitive advantage. However, most of the retention issues are due to various factors such as low pay, high pressure, lack of support, or poor management. In this article, we will discuss some of the best practices and strategies that fitness businesses can use to reduce employee turnover and increase employee engagement and loyalty.
The Bad Boss - Your Greatest Loss
That’s right you guessed it right. The top reason employees report as their main justification for leaving companies is because of “The Bad Boss”. When employees develop poor relationships with supervisors and managers they have been more likely to quit than those who have developed a healthy respectful and supportive relationships with leaders who have been charged with the responsibility to manage these employees. Bad bosses create toxic workplace environments. They thrive on micromanagement managing styles and are critical of employees. These managers frequently ignore employees and fail to provide the necessary feedback and guidance that employees require to improve and develop into great leaders. Rather than presenting opportunities for growth these leaders steal opportunities.
So, how do we address the issue of “The Bad Boss”? How do we improve the quality of our workplace environments?
Here are a few of the solutions that we found that works to help identify the root of the employee attrition issues:
Listen to Your Employees - Take inventory of the things that your employees are saying about your appointed managers and supervisors. Listening to these people, you may find that there are some common denominators which can help you address the behaviors and adjust the environment to benefit the employees and the company rather than to stroke the ego of an over zealous manager.
Conduct Development Meetings - Hosting individualized meetings with your employees once a month will help you identify the challenges that they may be dealing with in the workplace. It will give you with the opportunity to develop a relationship with the employee which will help you take the appropriate actions to improve the workplace quality.
Provide Managers with Quality Training - The quality of the training received by managers and supervisors can affect the way that they address employees and issues. Providing your managers with sufficient training will help you avoid these issue all together and support a more productive workplace. In short, you reduce your liabilities significantly by investing into your managers.
Lack of Benefits and Compensation
The second reason why employees feel the need to leave companies is when they feel under valued and under compensated. When employees feel this way they look for opportunities elsewhere. When these employees leave they usually leave suddenly without notice. Depending on the type of business, this can be very crucial to your operations. In fitness, this is particularly true when you have employees who may have covered shifts that present issues with coverage. One emerging theme that we have seen across all industry’s has been the concept of silent quitting by employees. Silent culture has led to many issues for fitness company owners and have actually caused many to lose revenue.
Since retention is the key to success in business, here is our suggestions to avoid attrition in this area;
Incentivize Your Employees - We acknowledge that fact that most companies reduce cost by reducing benefits which is generally a good idea. However, in the absence of these benefit options providing employees with other incentives such as paid days off, vacation bonuses, travel expense reimbursement, and health savings options all add value to the competitive benefits market. Remember that most, people work for “something” and it is your job to identify and provide it.
Reappropriate Funds - Repurposing money for the purpose of employee pay incentives are another benefit. Revising pay structures to benefit not just the company, but the employee can be very beneficial. If your current pay structure is based on hourly and commission pay, it may be a great idea to provide a sales bonus that guarantees to give the employee a bit more financial surety. Remember the financial health of your employees is just as important as the financial health of the company.
Expense Reimbursement - Reimbursing your employees for the cost of gas, food and other miscellaneous items may give employees another incentive to consider when considering an employer shift. It is important to always ensure that your employees are first in everything that you do.
Some other things that can enhance the employee experience would be membership perks for friends and family, flexible schedules, discounts on merchandise and services, and free memberships.
Wrong Culture - Leads to New Culture
Another reason why employees leave companies is culture. When the employees cultural expectations and views do not align with that of the company, there will more than likely always be a clash of views and expectations. For this reason and many more, employees generally find it best to quit positions in company’s where there exist conflicting views and go to those that align with their ideals. To counter this rather negative aspect of employee retention, fitness companies should always get ahead of the curve by ensuring that they are consistently creating a positive environment for employees and customers which fosters an inclusive culture and promotes collaboration, communication and innovation.
Some of the other points to remember that influence the employee experience are:
Employees feel overworked
Employees don’t feel valued
Scope and nature of work changes
Good employees leave
Fitness leaders and owners can significantly impact their business and its successes by placing their employees at the center of their business. Although we acknowledge that the goal is to maximize profit, we also recognize that potential correlates to profit. If we tap into the wells of potential through our most valuable assets our employees and people, we will find that there is so much more to gain in profit and overall revenue. Taking a People-Centric approach to your fitness business will give you the leverage you need to remain relevant and retain employees.