One of the biggest expenses in running a health club is the cost of staffing.

It can be useful to think of this expense as an investment. It is an investment that provides a return in terms of satisfied and supported members.

Like any investment, you want to ensure you get the highest possible return.

The value of your gym floor staff depends on the activity they do each shift. If they are sitting around checking their Facebook account then this means your investment is likely to provide a poor return.

So how can you maximise your return on your investment into your team?

Monitoring how your gym floor staff are spending their time can be a good starting point.

This can be a powerful exercise because you can begin to understand how your teams time is being used.

Is your team working on high leverage/impact activities most of the time?

Most service-based health clubs are investing in 300-500 hours in gym floor staffing each month.

This means that approximately 240 hours would be spent on conducting appointments with members,  approximately 80 hours on retention tasks, 40 hours on gym floor interaction etc.

The above is an ideal which most health clubs would struggle to get close to, however, this presents an interesting model to compare your clubs performance against.

Are your staff spending 80 hours each month on retention follow up tasks? Are they spending 40 hours interacting with members on the gym floor?

If you begin to track how your staff time is being used you will soon uncover a number of ways to enhance how that time is being used.