Team Culture | Nurture your fitness family
Support your staff and you will be rewarded in kind with a team who has your businesses best interests at heart.
Having a strong and inclusive team culture is not only about staff morale but also business performance. Happy staff translate to passionate trainers, but even more than that, an efficient business structure relies on a team that works well together at all levels. By investing in your staff employers will be rewarded with a ‘fitness family’, where each member has the best interests of the business at heart.
At last year’s Health and Fitness Industry Quality Awards, Leisurelink Aquatic and Recreation Centre won the Prize for Excellence for providing high quality services and excellence across its entire business. The centre’s Health & Fitness Manager, Simon Coverdale says culture is paramount to a businesses success, “as it sets the tone for the service and experience customers receive.”
While they are only a young organisation, Coverdale says Leisurelink has deliberately focused on building its operations and management around strong and clear values: a culture of belonging where members and staff can forge lasting connections through health and fitness, a can-do approach to problem-solving at every level, deep engagement with the broader community, and a laser-like focus on training, retaining and developing successful employees through ongoing education. “Together we embrace diversity and treat each other with respect. We recognise everyone’s contribution, provide opportunities for growth and development and value a job well done. We are considerate and courteous and recognise our staff as critical to our continued success,” he says.
For Leisurelink, establishing a strong team culture was a conscious decision and one that was achieved by investing in their staff, by underwriting mandatory staff qualifications and obtaining funding for higher education courses, and recognising their performance through a reward system. To ensure that this culture progresses naturally as the business grows the core values and expected behaviours of Leisurelink are established in their induction process.
When recruiting staff, rather than running them through a formal theory-based sit-down questionnaire, Leisurelink prefers to see potential employees in action. All candidates are required to perform realistic components of the role they are applying for and if successful are hired first on a casual basis. “We understand that having the right people in the right roles is crucial to the success of our business,” says Coverdale. “Those who fit and support our culture ultimately go on to secure permanent roles within our business.”
There’s no denying the importance of cultivating a team culture. “If you don’t know what your team culture is, it’s like flying blind,” says Coverdale. “Good businesses know the culture they want to have and then go about implementing it with every decision that is made.”
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