Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008 - (Page 17)

These weren’t items you thought to cover during his training period. It never occurred to you that you needed to specify things, to create rules for things, that to you had always seemed like such obvious “no-no’s” in this business. Besides, it isn’t your style to rule with an iron ﬁst. But as infractions to policies that don’t exist become more prevalent, like using the phone excessively for personal calls and blowing oﬀ studio cleaning duties because there are no consequences, you realize you need to step up and lead this team. That’s what an employee manual or handbook is all about: leading your team. It’s about creating a fair playing ﬁeld where all your employees — whether they are contract, hourly or salary — know what’s expected of them. Without it, you are making promises in the dark, and you have no consistent recourse when things fall apart. I know because, until recently, I was one of the majority of small business owners, and probably the vast majority of training studio owners, who didn’t have an employee handbook. It wasn’t that I was resistant to the idea, it was that my business boomed from the minute I opened my doors. Since then, I’ve been so consumed with keeping up that I never made time to write the handbook and to get ahead. I know now that was a mistake. It is much more diﬃcult to impose policies and behavior expectations retroactively. In hindsight, I would have made this a priority from the beginning. • Small companies must comply with most of the same laws as large companies. At ﬁve employees, most state anti-discrimination laws apply. At 15 employees, the Civil Rights Acts, Americans with Disabilities Act and Federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act apply. Make sure your employee handbook explicitly shows that you comply with these laws. It is always a good idea to have a lawyer review your employee handbook. ➤ Why Have an Employee Manual? Small business experts say these are some of the key reasons why small businesses need a handbook: • In the absence of a policy, past and present practices become policy. In other words, once a behavioral precedent has been set, that becomes the law of your studio, whether you like it or not. Because I ran my studio for more than a year without an employee handbook, I saw behaviors like arriving just when a client session started, rather than 10 minutes early like I preferred, become the standard. It was only when I had it in writing that trainers were expected to be at the studio 10 minutes before a session to be considered “on time” and that there were speciﬁc consequences for not being “on time” that the behavior began to change. MAY2008 · WWW.FIT-PRO.COM 17 http://WWW.FIT-PRO.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008

Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008 Contents Letter from the Editor, Writers Live Your Supertrainer Legacy Current Controversies Effective Employee Manuals Product Profiles The Coolest Training Zone The Making of a Top-Notch Boot Camp Instructor Mark Your Calendar Caffeine Exercise Spotlight Product Profiles New on the Market [Spotlight] Trish Muse

Personal Fitness Professional - May 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.