How to Keep Your Pilates Staff Motivated and Happy

Is your Pilates staff motivated and happy? Keeping your team satisfied and inspired is the secret to success! But why is employee satisfaction so important? Read on to find out why Pilates staff retention could make or break your business.

Team Morale is Crucial

Not convinced that a motivated staff should be priority number one? According to a Gallup poll conducted in the United States on employee engagement, 70% of employees lack motivation, which is costing American businesses $450 billion to $550 billion in lost revenue per year. Now that’s a lot of money riding on employees’ happiness at work!

Pilates Staff Retention Tips

So, how do you get your team performing at their best? We’ve put together this list of staff retention tips to maximum their performance and set your studio up for success:

1. Hire the best

Now, we’re not talking about the most educated, the most qualified, or the most experienced here. Think most passionate, most enthusiastic, and most willing to learn. That’s not to say that experience doesn’t count of course, but attitude is what determines whether a staff member is a valuable asset to your team.

Find employees that want to work with you, that share your love for Pilates and are eager to learn and improve. Those employees will grow with your business, and if you’re lucky, their positivity will rub off on the rest of your team, too!

How do you find the right fit? It can be tough to get it right the first time, but don’t worry, we’re all learning as we go!

Try and interview with the goal of finding candidates with great attitudes. Already have some great team members? Ask them for a candidate referral! They might just be a great resource in searching out like-minded team members.

If you work on building a Pilates staff that’s positive and encouraging, your business will reflect your great choices.

2. Listen to your staff

What makes a staff member feel appreciated and valued? A boss who listens!

Ask your employees for suggestions on improving your processes, better serving your clients, upping staff morale and anything else you think might help! They’re your representation on the front lines and they can offer you real, valuable feedback to make your business better.

Do they have ideas for new classes? Are they looking for more vacation time? Have they suggested a new software or staff training? You don’t need to adopt every new change or embrace every suggestion, but validating their contribution will make you a great boss!

Why is it important to be a great boss? According to a similar Gallup poll involving 7,212 employees, statistics showed that 50% of people surveyed had left a full-time positions because they were unhappy with management. Take away: great bosses keep great employees!

This is one of those staff motivation tips that can be a challenge, but a happy team is a productive team.

Listening can be harder than you think, especially when it involves criticism about your business, but rather than taking constructive suggestions personally, look at it as an opportunity to build trust with your staff and make your studio the best it can be.

3. Build a family

Listening to your employees effectively is even easier once you get to know them. They’re your work family and building a family means building a loyal, long-term team.

Think about it this way: when you work for someone you consider to be family, you don’t want to let them down.

Taking a genuine interest in your team! Who are they? What are they interested in? When you’re all working together towards one common goal, your Pilates staff will want to contribute to the success of your studio.

4. Share the responsibilities

Trust your Pilates staff with some responsibility and watch them soar! When you show confidence in your staff’s abilities, they’ll believe in themselves and want to make you proud.

Do you have an employee who wants a bigger job title? Give them a chance! An enthusiastic team member? Put them in charge of training new employees.

Look for your team’s strengths and find ways show off and build on those strengths to turn an impressive team into superstars!

5. Get together

Want to keep your all-star team happy and motivated? Remind them that you’re a team by having a little fun and working together!

Maybe it seems like common sense, but it’s easy to get lost in the day to day running of your business and forget that the people that bond together, perform best together.

Not sure how? Organize a tournament day where healthy competition pushes each side to perform at their best as a team. Do some exercises where your Pilates staff can have fun building trust. Or maybe you want to undertake a charity event to help make a difference together.

The key is to just go out and have fun together! Bonding is a fantastic way to build a strong team of loyal, happy employees.

Not only does getting together bring your team closer together, it also shows your staff that they’re valued and important to you. If you’re willing to invest time and money into their performance and happiness, they’ll invest in you too!

6. Give them perks

How do you feel as an employee when your company offers you incentives, rewards, or perks? Would this make your feel appreciated? Valued? Motivated to perform at your best? When someone values you as an important member of their team, you tend to want to live up to—or even exceed—their expectations.

What’s the best approach? Start by finding out what your Pilates staff is interested in, what would motivate them best and do what you can to offer what they need. Here are a few different routes you might take:

Discounts and freebies

Consider giving your Pilates staff a discount or a free membership as a reward for their loyalty. Have a long-term employee? Maybe they are interested in a discounted membership for their family. You can also offer free merch or prizes.

Think about the best ways to incentivize your team and work towards offering what matters most to them!

Partnership perks

You could develop a relationship with other businesses, where you could offer perks to one another’s employees! You never know when you might need an ally in business, so these types of partnerships have more than one benefit.

Get started by visiting a local restaurant, gym, clothing store to see if there’s interest. Consider soliciting multiple stores to be able to offer your team perks they can really use!

Outside the box

Ask your employees what would make them the happiest! Do they want more time off? Maybe you could implement a day off on their birthday rule. Are they interested in a higher income? Consider staff contests where they could win a cash prize. (Maybe for the staff member who signs up the most memberships in a month?) Would incentives motivate them? Work on developing a tiered system with achievement-based bonuses.

You don’t have to take a standard approach. Look at what your employees need and find ways that suit you both to deliver on your promises, keeping your team motivated and happy.

You all win when your business grows and your team consists of long-term, high performing, motivated Pilates staff!

7. Prioritize work-life balance

Work-life balance is something we’re all striving for in today’s hectic world! If you recognize that this is something important to your team, you’ll get ahead of the game and ahead of your competition.

Earn the reputation as an employer that really cares about their team! Ask for your staff’s input on how to manage a better work-life balance. If your staff knows that their lives are important to you, they’ll be motivated to make you (and by extension, your business) a priority, too.

How do you show you really care about balance? Schedule your staff in reasonable blocks, be flexible with their scheduling needs and take an interest in their social lives. Employees are more likely to remain motivated and happy when they feel like they’ve got you on their team.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is, people who feel valued and appreciated tend to work harder. The old adage ‘treat people the way you’d like to be treated,’ is highly applicable in a work environment. The secret to keeping your Pilates staff satisfied and inspired is to treat them the way you wish your employer would treat you.

Searching for interested employees, listening to your team, building a family, trusting your staff and making work-life balance a priority will grow your business in ways that spending money on problem-solving never will.

Be a great boss and you’ll develop a team of happy, motivated and highly productive team of Pilates staff superstars!

Ready to get your team pumped to perform? While you’re building the best team in the biz, let WellnessLiving’s all-in-one Pilates studio management software take care of your day to day operations such as bookings, client check-ins, staff and client apps, staff payroll, and much more! Book a free, no-commitment demo today.