Onboarding your Members

Dated ‘member journeys’ or compulsory induction processes are a thing of the past and need to be updated for a modern fitness environment.  Having a clear onboarding process in place is important, but to make it deliver successful member retention that builds confidence and routine, it must follow a few simple rules.

  1. Be clear and simple for members and your team
  2. Have education for all of the team and departments to understand the process and reasons behind it with inclusion in all staff induction and on-going education
  3. Be built into all systems, technology and processes to feel seamless and aligned
  4. Be realistic with resources to deliver continuously, using digital systems to allow efficiency
  5. Be structured enough to be transparent with enough flexibility to support members as individuals with different needs and goals
  6. Support members in connecting not just with what they want to achieve but why and how

Even when we have an onboarding process in place with needs analysis and goal setting, we tend to focus on the what, “how much weight do you want to lose, by when?” and then produce a programme.

To truly meet people where they are, we need to dig deeper and create a more emotional connection to it. We need the What, Why and How.

What – the measurable outcome -weight loss, increased fitness or strength, more energy etc. It is important to quantify it.

Why – We need to follow up with some simple questions

  • Why do you want to achieve this/Why does this matter to you?
  • If you look forwards 6mths and you have achieved this, what difference would it make to you?

By doing this we find out much more about what has really motivated them to be active and understand the deeper motivations.

This is when we get responses like “I want to feel confident enough to go out with my friends and the weekend and feel good” or “I want to be a better parent to my children and be able to play football for longer than 5 mins without getting out of breath” or maybe “there’s history of heart disease in my family, I don’t want to die in my 50’s” these things matter.

How – how will they realistically build a plan of activity and how will they overcome the challenges that could prevent them?

Simply asking how many times a week will you work out usually leads to general answers they haven’t actually given real thought to – 3 times per week is the standard answer. Asking what specific days these might be makes them really think about scheduling exercise into their life. It may be that 2 is more realistic, if currently they are doing less or none, this is a great start. Stating 3 times a week and only achieving 2 could feel like failure.

NEXT STEPS

Take the time to review your onboarding process – is it fit for purpose? Does it achieve your objectives?  Are the staff trained to deliver it?

Would you like to work with a partner like TA6 to embed a system that works for you?  If so, contact us below and we can help with a free review of your current processes.  This quick online chat will help us identify if and how we can support your facilities.

Get in touch and see how we can help.

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