Opening A Gym Requirement #5) Hire Staff

Hiring staff is for established gyms as many gym founders start by running and managing the gym by themselves. 

Once your gym starts producing income in the 6-figures yearly, it’s now time to consider hiring your first employees. Most gyms only need a few employees to cover administrative tasks such as reception, personal training, and cleaning/maintenance.

The staff has to deliver a fantastic customer experience for new clients because this will reflect in your bottom line profits. To motivate people to work harder, you’ll need to pay them fair wages, and this can cause new gyms to go in the red. 

Don’t hire anyone until you’ve established a stable income, and you’re confident you can cover the extra expenses, which can amount to $50,000-100,000/year for a few employees.

Once you start getting consistent membership and you need help, hire your first receptionist or personal trainer who can help you with daily tasks. The most common reasons to hire staff are that you’re expanding and you need all the help you can get. 

When you’re starting, you’ll probably enjoy dealing with the administrative tasks of signing up new members, helping members achieve their goals, promoting on social media, etc. 

The following are the top 3 signs that your gym is ready to hire people:

  • Membership goes over 50-100 consistent members per month

  • You find yourself running out of time to do everything you need to do.

  • You are always overwhelmed by the sheer number of responsibilities you must handle.

Pro Tip: If you can maintain the gym on your own and you don’t mind training people and cleaning the gym yourself, only hire a receptionist. Don’t rush to hire more people unless you absolutely need to. 

Essential Gym Staff

The following are the top 3 most essential personnel types for your gym:

1) Receptionists/Front Desk Staff

Average Salary: $20,000-37,000/year.

The first thing people will notice when they enter the gym is the receptionist. Once you’re not at the gym, you need someone who’s a people person to welcome people into your gym, sign up new members, sell merchandise, and help answer questions.

Receptionists have to possess excellent communication skills to engage with people who might not be members of the gym but mere prospects. Their job is to invoice clients, collect payments, register new members, schedule opening/closing times, sell merchandise, and assist with any questions. It’s a full-time job and requires a lot of patience and dedication.

Gym members often want to ask questions and socialize, so the right person should enhance the vibe of your gym by welcoming everyone and making them feel at home. 

Receptionists bring a lot of value for owners because they free up the majority of your time and allow you to focus on the back-end of running the business, such as accounting and marketing.

NOTE: Low-cost gym successes in the U.K., such as pure gym, have proved that you can run a profitable gym without having a reception area or a receptionist. Secure, password enabled check-in doors, limit access to members.

2) Personal Trainers

Average Salary: $60,000/year.

Personal trainers are present at every gym, and this is an essential requirement because they can customize every member’s workout. 

If you want to save money, you can become a personal trainer yourself by getting certified. This certification will allow you to legally charge members for training lessons and produce customized workout/meal plans.

If you hire a personal trainer, you need someone with a deep background in fitness who is certified and knowledgeable about exercising. They have to be approachable, empathetic, and willing to help out clients. 

The purpose of hiring a trainer is to help your clients achieve their fitness goals by individually paying attention to their needs and devising workout plans based on their fitness level.

Big gyms tend to have multiple personal trainers. Personal trainers either work on an individual basis by engaging with students face-to-face or train large groups at pre-scheduled classes.

The personal trainer can operate as a manager of the gym by being present and individually training members at each point of the day. You can charge members for access to your trainers and pay them a full-time salary or pay them for each student they get.

3) Maintenance Staff

Average Salary: $30,000/year.     

Maintenance staff is essential for maintaining the cleanliness of your gym. A gym is a messy place with a lot of sweat on the ground. You need someone who can clean up in the late hours upon closing and someone to refresh the gym before opening and during operational hours.

The maintenance staff doesn’t need any experience in fitness because they won’t be engaging with your clients directly.

Hire people who are hard workers and who understand the importance of keeping things in order. Your members will notice the cleanliness of the locker rooms and equipment – make sure they see you’ve put a lot of effort into keeping it top-notch.

How To Hire Gym Staff In 3 Simple Steps

1) Know What You Expect And Say It

The first step is to write clear ads that state precisely what you expect from employees, job duties, and compensation. You need clarity. 

Example: Let’s say you’re hiring a personal trainer. Instead of describing the personality traits of a personal trainer or their certifications, start by defining the requirements you have for their daily tasks at the gym. Use the “jobs to be done” framework.

  • Would you require them to work 8-10 hours a day?

  • Would they have to make individual meal plans and workouts for customers?

  • How many customers will they have to process a day?

  • Will they get extra compensation for extra hours?

  • Do they have to work on weekends?

  • Will they have morning or night shifts?

Know what you need, and describe it correctly in your ads. This framework is how you write the ideal ad to attract employees. Focus on objectives instead of personality traits. You can analyze their personality once you meet face-to-face.

Think about the objectives you expect each employee to tackle throughout their employment. Do you have any long term goals and plans you want to set based on your employees’ performance? 

Here are a few ideas:

  • Goals. What do you expect them to get done over the first year? Do you expect them to train 50, 100, or 200 people individually?

  • Success Rate. Do you expect personal trainers to have a success rate dealing with clients? How do you measure that – is it by the individual success stories of clients or by how many remain on the training program over 6 or 12 months?

  • Client Reviews. Are over 90% of clients satisfied with your trainers and other staff? Do you get complaints in the complaint box about one of your staff members? What is the cutoff line for complaints before parting ways?

2) Schedule Personal Meetings

If you’re interested in hiring a person based on their CV, meet them in person, and start vetting them. 

Make no guarantees you’ll hire them, but only invite them for a short interview. This meeting will allow you to analyze their skills in real life, which is integral for a business like a gym that relies on personal interaction for success.

The people you hire are the people representing your gym – they’re the face of the gym when you’re gone. 

To an average client who walks in the gym, it won’t matter if they see John, the personal trainer, or Larry, the gym CEO/owner. Even if Larry could make a better impression on clients, if John messes up, they will leave the gym for a more customer-friendly gym. Check for personality traits:

  • Are they the kind of person with whom you’d like to train?

  • Do they look knowledgeable and empathetic?

The last thing you want is to hire incompetent or rude trainers that leave your clients with a bad taste in their mouth. Hiring good trainers who are rude can create problems for you in the long term as you’ll start losing clients. 

Your trainers have to have people skills, sales skills, and, most importantly, live up to their own ideals. They need to be in tune with the latest fitness standards and give adequate advice that helps clients.

Note: Each staff member plays a critical customer service role, no matter how menial their job is. 

The front desk staff has to be diligent, hard-working, and ready to assist clients with whatever needs they might have. Meeting face-to-face is the only way to determine how effective these candidates will operate in the gym without your presence. Trust your gut and hire away.

3) Check References & Certificates

Hiring personal trainers is similar to hiring other professionals, such as lawyers and doctors. They have CVs that list references from past jobs that you can call up and inquire about their reliability. 

This background check is the final step of the screening process. Once you’ve met face-to-face and you’re about to hire someone, the last measure you want to take it to call up the references provided and verify they’ve done an excellent job in the past.

Make sure the certificates they’re showing are legitimate and check whether they have the education necessary to train clients. This way, you’re not putting your clients in danger.

Today, you can also use the services provided by background checking companies. Such companies will do all the background checks you need for a fee.