The group fitness director of a national health club chain recently suggested to Health Club Management that, in an age when people can download workout programmes from the internet – with videos showing how to do the exercises – fitness know-how is less important among gym staff than soft skills. Indeed, he questioned whether we even needed qualified fitness people on the gym floor.
His view was that you have to build a relationship with members before they will accept help from you: you can have the most in-depth physiological knowledge, but unless you can chat to someone – and have the ability to push them out of their comfort zone – then all that knowledge will go to waste.
So does this mean the fitness industry can start skimping on the wage bill, employing people with a winning manner even if they don’t know much about fitness? Or does it mean that, in addition to employing fitness instructors, we need hosts as well: people who will give members a warm welcome and have a friendly, motivational chat with them each time they come in?
Alternatively, should we be ramping up the training in soft skills to ensure fitness instructors are able to offer the full package? Should we be more selective in our interviewing process, actively choosing people with soft skills to work our gym floors? As the sector strives to encourage new – less gym-savvy – audiences into its facilities, will it become more important to have both sets of skills? Will service increasingly be the differentiator between operators?
The tourism industry realised the importance of soft skills almost 20 years ago, working out that, unless the bar was raised, the UK would lose customers to other countries who prided themselves on customer service. So what can the fitness industry learn from other sectors? Can soft skills be learned – and if so, who should teach them? We ask the experts...