Your staff are the front line of your business. They take your systems and impart them on your clients. A strong argument could be made for your staff being even more important than your clients. They spread you culture, live by your core values and and the biggest point of interaction between your clients and your business.

With Range of Motion Business Mentoring clients, we teach that a large amount of business resources (time and money) should be thrown at your staff.

It begins with hiring.

Quite simply, you need to hire good people.

We’re in the people industry, not the health and fitness industry. It just so happen that the service we provide is health, but that’s not our industry.

To this end, hire good people, who are good with people, who care about people. 80% of the selection criteria for new staff is right there.

You need to hire to fit your culture and core values.

Much of the remaining 20% is about their ability to follow the systems you set for them. They’re in the driving seat of the business machine, and it’s hard for them to point it in the direction you intend if they don’t know how to steer.

Qualifications and experience rank way down the list when it comes to priorities of potential staff qualities. You can teach them systems, you can teach them how to coach a squat. It’s a lot harder to teach someone to be a good person.

Hire for personality, not for experience, expertise or qualifications. Sure, they’re nice to have, but not if the personality box isn’t ticked.

And just like with clients, the single most important thing we can offer our staff is care. If you genuinely care for their success and wellbeing, look after them and build them up, your business will benefit enormously. And aside from the business, being nice to people is never bad advice. Treat them well, buy them birthday presents, take them out for dinner.

But genuine care doesn’t mean you should be lax about holding them to high standards. You should expect a lot from your staff, and strongly enforce the systems you’ve created. This can sometimes be difficult as they won’t always see the big picture. They probably don’t have the personal and emotional investment in the business that you do, they don’t lay awake at night thinking about the business, and they aren’t aware of the hundreds of tiny connections and interacting systems that create the overall machine. And that’s ok. Do your best to share the inner workings with them, and give them reasons for the systems you enforce. Reasons help build adherence.

Even if they do understand, you sometimes have to play the role of ‘the boss’. Again, this isn’t always easy. People like to be liked, and you sometimes have to do things that you may think will push people away. But you need to stick to your systems. Not to say that you don’t listen to their opinions and suggestions (you absolutely should), but enforce your policies. Without intending to sound condescending (it’s an imperfect metaphor), it’s like training a puppy. Sometimes you have to act more angry than you really are when they chew your slippers. It doesn’t make them love you any less. There’s no reason you can’t hold people to high standards, show them genuine care, and build meaningful and significant friendships at the same time.

It’s important to note, if your staff mess up or underperform, it’s 100% your fault. And you need to take the responsibility. If they turn out to not care for your clients, you hired poorly. If they don’t understand what they should be doing, you’ve made things too complicated or difficult. If they’re not enforcing your systems, you haven’t taught them the systems and emphasised their importance. It all comes down to you. And if they’re doing a good job, that comes down to you too.

You can systemise the process of communicating with your staff. Of course, this doesn’t mean your door isn’t always open, but once a quarter, schedule a one-on-one sit down with your staff just to touch base. At Range of Motion, the following questions help drive the conversation:

• How could the facility be improved to better suit your needs and the needs of your clients?
• What is the least enjoyable part of your job?
• Are there any opportunities the business could be giving you which it currently isn’t?
• How could we improve our Professional Development?
• What content would you like to see included in future PD?
• Are there any systems that you don’t fully understand?
• Can you think of any ways we could improve any of our systems?
• Are you looking for more clients?
• Do you currently have any clients you’re having challenges/problems/difficulties with?
• Do you have any personal projects or niche areas you’d like to build within the business?

We’ve talked about the importance of personality when it comes to hiring. That expertise can be taught. And taught it should be.

You should have a comprehensive Professional Development program, a way to increase the strength of your staff team.

A monthly professional development event of at least two hours to be attended by all staff as a minimum. For bonus points shout them lunch during this event.

The contents of the PD should reflect the service offered by your business, but it’s important to know it shouldn’t just be about the ‘hard skills’ of coaching movement and programming exercises. The ‘soft skills’ are just as (if not more) important.

At Range of Motion, the staff PD structure follows this basic template:

• Revise core values. Choose one core value and discuss how we’re currently doing it well and ways in which we can do it better.
• Talk about what the business owner is focusing on currently in the development of the business – it’s important to include the staff in the ‘behind the scenes’ workings of the business.
• Group problem solving: Discuss any challenges currently with clients. The ‘If… then..’. game. If …. happens, then you should react by …’.
• Discuss any current ‘bright spots’ with clients, things we’ve recently done well. Discuss how to do more of these.
• Revise one of our systems to make sure it’s well understood and being well implemented and adhered to.
• A topic to debate, where staff have to argue both the negative and the affirmative.
• One coach presents to the rest of the team on a topic of their choice.
• Role play: One coach coaches another coach through a movement. The rest of the staff team uses the report card to assess them. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the coach. The coach briefly discusses how they think we can all learn from their strengths. The coach discusses how they’re doing on the other items on the report card (things that weren’t covered in that session).
• The professional development shouldn’t be confined to a monthly PD however. Your staff group should be constantly interacting a developing each other’s skills.

Your staff really are your front line of your business. Give a lot to them, expect a lot from them, and in return you’ll build a business that is more than the sum of its parts, with the potential to positively impact the lives of everyone who interacts with it.