Incentives & Paid Time Off: A Win/Win for You and Your Fitness Staff

Many personal training team managers and personal training studio owners can attest to the difficulties they face when trying to implement simple, cost effective and rewarding incentives and paid time off for their staff. Over the past 16.5 years of owning and running personal training studios I have tried it all and I have learned that keeping things simple is the key! There are ways to do all of this that are a win/win for you, your personal training staff and your clients.

Learning Objectives:

1. Get ideas on different incentives that truly entice personal trainers and incentive ideas that they will truly use.
2. Learn how to structure bonuses for personal trainers that are simple to implement, are motivating and keep your fitness business profitable.
3. Understand why paid time off for personal trainers is so important and how to implement it simply and fairly.

Inspiring and Enticing Incentives

Freebees and Discounts – offer your staff discounts and freebees where you can and where they will actually use them.

Personal trainers continually need to keep up on their continuing education credits and that can be both time consuming and expensive. We host 2 one day conferences every year. Our personal trainers attend these conferences at no cost. Other personal trainers from around the Pacific Northwest pay to come to our conferences to offset the cost of the events. This is a win/win for everyone. Our trainers keep up with their CECs for no cost, local trainers have access to a 1-day conference they don’t have to travel too far for and we also create a bit of revenue by hosting the event.

We also offer a free membership to our facilities to all staff and a 30% discount on nutrition and spa services. You can’t forget your staff’s family. All staff can purchase personal training, spa or nutritional packages for immediate family for 15% off.

Bonus Structure – there are numerous ways to structure personal trainer bonuses and it is difficult to know which is best. I have tried it all and have landed on the following system that has worked for us. It is simple for your operations team and your personal trainers to understand and implement. Oh, and it is motivating and rewarding too!

Our bonuses are based on productivity. Our profitable and consistent business model is based on trainers keeping around an 80% productivity level. That means that for 80% of the hours that each trainer is scheduled to be at the studio he/she should be with a paid client (group training, one-on-one training, partner training etc.) and 20% of his/her time should be spent on admin/sales work. If trainers have a productivity level higher than 80% they receive more bonuses:

• Bi-Weekly Productivity Bonus System (30-39 hours per week)
  • If you hit 83% productivity (including paid private and group training hours), you will receive an additional $25 Bonus to your paycheck
  • If you hit 87% productivity (including paid private and group training hours), you will receive an additional $50 Bonus to your paycheck
• Bi-Weekly Productivity Bonus System (40 hours per week)
  • If you hit 83% productivity (including paid private and group training hours), you will receive an additional $50 Bonus to your paycheck
  • If you hit 87% productivity (including paid private and group training hours), you will receive an additional $100 Bonus to your paycheck
• Monthly BONUS System (20-29 hours per week) - If you/our team hit(s) any of the following goals, you will be rewarded the associated bonus:
  • Individual Monthly Personal Training Sales Goal: $25
  • Company Revenue Goal: $50
  • Personal Training & Group Revenue Goal: $50
• Monthly BONUS System (30 hours or more per week) - If you/our team hit(s) any of the following goals, you will be rewarded the associated bonus:
  • Individual Monthly Personal Training Sales Goal: $50
  • Company Revenue Goal: $75
  • Personal Training & Group Revenue Goal: $75

Paid Time Off for Personal Trainers

Win for Personal Trainers: Managing paid time off for personal trainers can be difficult. Many owners and managers struggle with how to fairly allocate paid vacation time to their trainers while remaining a profitable business. The answer: have a planned and flexible approach to time off.

Here at Northwest Personal Training, we support a balance between our employee’s personal and work life. Therefore, we believe that employees should enjoy time away from work for relaxation and enjoyment, in addition to time off for illness, appointments, emergencies or other needs without loss of pay.

We acknowledge that employees have diverse needs for time off from work. Accordingly, we have established a Paid Time Off, or PTO, policy to meet these needs.

Employees are held accountable and responsible for managing their own PTO hours to allow for adequate reserves for vacations, illness or disability, holidays, appointments, emergencies, or other needs that require time off from work.

• Less than 1 year – 0 days
• 1-2 years – 5 days x average shift at average pay
• 2-5 years – 10 days x average shift at average pay
• 5-15 years – 15 days x average shift at average pay
• 15+ years – 20 days x average shift at average pay

Here is an example:

A personal trainer has been working for the company for 2 years and one month.  He/she works an average of 30 hours/week at $17/hour.
He/she is eligible for 60 hours x $17/hour of Paid Time Off.

Win for Managers:

• No need to distinguish between sick days and vacation days
• Easy to track and calculate the number of PTO days/hours each trainer gets
• Calculation for PTO is simple to explain to trainers and helps everyone stick to the PTO policy
• Personal trainers that are given PTO are less likely to burn out and more likely to continue their job and continue to work for you!

Finding and keeping a world class staff is not easy, but having enticing incentives and a clearly defined paid time off policy can add to the reasons why your staff will never want to leave!

Remember, it is possible to keep your incentive and paid time off programs simple and manageable and keep your fitness business in the black!