Getting a Handle on Your Health Club’s To-Do List

When you and your staff wear a lot of hats, it can be tough to keep track of things at the most basic level, especially the wide range of daily tasks you all undertake.

At GritCycle, which operates three clubs in Southern California, multiple hat-wearing is endemic to the operation—and it starts at the top.

“I personally wear a lot of hats in my role,” says Lisa Mikelson, a co-founder and vice president. “However, I love each and every one of those hats. As one of the owners, I help out with the day-to-day tasks and operation of the business, including everything from optimizing studio operations to marketing. As vice president of instructor experience, I also train all incoming team members, provide continued education to our current instructors, write and implement protocols, organize team growth and development, and manage our instructor experience team.”

GritCycle’s 60 staffers work in much the same way.

“All of our team members wear a lot of hats,” Mikelson says. “In addition to our job descriptions, we are all motivators, customer service experts, and operational gurus to some degree. Every action we take and decision we make as a business is done to better serve our individual team members and our amazing community of riders.”

Hitting a Wall

Every operator is aware of the myriad of tasks that needs to be undertaken every hour of every day. Like any operation, GritCycle asks a lot of its team members.

“Our staff has an extensive list of tasks that they are asked to complete daily,” Mikelson says. “And because our doors are open from very early in the morning to late into the evening, there are specific tasks that not only need to be completed for each shift but also tasks that directly impact the following shift coming into the studio.”

That overall list of duties includes everything from keeping the studios clean to making sure the equipment is operating properly.

Mikelson acknowledges that GritCycle’s expectations for its in-studio team members are high. And, since the company debuted in 2013, it has been steadily growing, amplifying the importance of those every day, yet critical tasks.

Recently, the GritCycle team realized that, as its staff, number of members, and programming were all expanding, it needed a more efficient way to track what was getting done—and what wasn’t.

“At the beginning of 2022, we realized that we wanted to start implementing more supportive systems for our in-studio team members,” notes Mikelson. “We needed a better organizational system and structure to make sure that our studios were operating as effectively and efficiently as possible.”

To that end, the clubs recently implemented MeazureUp, a software program designed to help GritCycle track daily tasks companywide by shift. While they’ve only just started using the tool, Mikelson is encouraged by the early results.

“So far, we’re seeing that it’s helping us keep things from falling through the cracks, so we’re excited to see how it works in the longer term,” she adds.

How MeazureUp Measures Up

MeazureUp was created in 2016 for restaurant operations that were reliant on paper to manage various components of their store operations. Its first product, AuditApp, was developed to help operators maintain consistency across multiple locations. Since then, another product, DailyChex, has been added to support that same goal.

“After working with restaurants, we realized that the problems our solution solved were not unique to that industry,” says Jason Benchetrit, associate at MeazureUp. “For any business with multiple facilities, once the brand grows enough, owners can struggle to manage consistency across their stores, thus hurting the brand image. That led us to start looking at other verticals, including fitness centers.”

In addition to tracking time, the primary function of both apps is to speed up the site inspection process while providing actionable data upon completion, Benchetrit explains. Compared to their paper counterparts, doing an inspection or checklist by phone allows for pictures, comments, and corrective action. When inspections are completed, the entire team receives a summary email. For operators, all results are aggregated in a web-based dashboard, which allows management to compare store, employee, and regional performance.

In addition to granting users the ability to fill out daily checklists or site visit forms from a phone or tablet, Benchetrit outlines other key benefits of the Mobile Assessment App:

● Accountability. You know your processes are being done correctly as opposed to relying on an employee telling you that they were done properly.

● Consistency across locations. When all facilities are following the same processes, they will look and feel the same.

● Speed. “MeazureUp helps complete daily checklist and site visits 30% faster,” he says. “When something isn’t as it should be, you can immediately alert team members who need to know, leading to faster resolution times.”

Perhaps the platform’s core advantage is simply giving operators the data they need to make sure what has to get done gets done because, as the all-too-true adage goes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

To learn more about MeazureUp, visit their website.