Identifying the need for change
The health and fitness industry is booming. It feels like every time you walk down the street, a new fitness fad has emerged. However, not every gym or center can keep up with moving trends. Customer experience and innovative thinking are what stand the test of time.
Anytime Fitness is a leader in this space with over 13 years in the market. They have a global brand that stretches across the US, Canada and ANZ, with 530 gyms in Australia alone. The franchise has a mantra – workout ‘Anytime, Anywhere’. This has enabled them to set themselves apart from the competition and provide a seamless customer experience that allows 24/7 access to any of their gyms, no matter where the customer is located.
As the brand continues to grow, they have come to realize that the employee experience is just as crucial as the customer experience. The coordination required to bring hundreds of franchisees, trainers, and head office staff together from various locations in Australia was becoming challenging. They needed a tool to help them dramatically transform the communication experience in-house.
Workplace Results
“The potential of Workplace is enormous. You immediately feel like you are a part of something bigger where you can be celebrated and recognized. You can physically see the size and scale of what people across the business are doing, providing an immediate sense of belonging. Previously, Anytime Fitness Australia came together twice a year for major events only. Workplace gives us that opportunity to come together every day.”
Rob Hale – General Manager, Anytime Fitness Australia
Getting motivated
Four months into his role as General Manager of Anytime Fitness Australia, Rob Hale discovered that communicating with 250 franchisees was no easy feat. Email and intranet was the primary form of communication for the company, with only 30% of club owners engaging with updates. The companies intranet also acted more like a noticeboard, with no intelligent search function or ability to search for documents or by chronological order.
The company had massive potential to crowdsource new and exciting ideas, but with over 500 individually managed clubs, alignment was difficult with the tools on offer. After listening to the pain points of the Franchisees, Club Managers and Support Office, Rob was on a mission to improve communications and started looking for a tool that could help him communicate and change the culture at the same time.
Communicating anytime, anywhere
Rob chose Workplace from Meta because of its ability to segment groups and make communications specific to franchisees, club managers, and personal trainers. It would give the company the ability to ‘work out loud’ and have transparent, two-way conversations in real-time. The platform’s ability to reach different geolocations was also attractive, as was its ability to give instant updates – a significant perk for a global, 24-hour gym service.
Enablo steps in fighting fit…
With Workplace chosen as Rob’s preferred communications tool, he found he needed further support to deploy the technology and change management strategy. He reached out to Enablo – an Elite Workplace Partner – to help bring the employee experience to life. Our experience consultants got to work immediately, starting with their signature Blueprint Sprint, a series of workshop sessions that explore company business goals, values, technology stack, implementation, community, and communication strategy. The Blueprint helped Rob and the team prioritize their ideas and create a seamless Workplace implementation plan aligned to their business’s future ways of working.
“I didn’t know what to expect from Enablo, but when I think back about landing that plane alone with no support, the plane would not have even reached lift-off.”
– Rob Hale, General Manager, Anytime Fitness
To build more momentum on the platform, the Anytime Fitness team will start inviting their personal trainers to the platform and experimenting with safe, and easy knowledge-sharing ideas, including an ‘Ask the Network’ group and live Q&As to help build trust and fun amongst the team to help shift from corporate to conversation. Rob and the team will also continue to explore integrations and automation within Workplace that will enhance the employee experience and look at rolling out project management solutions with Enablo such as Asana.
We can’t wait to see what Rob and the team come up with!
“Every franchisee had different communication teams, interests, and objectives, and without Zarese and the Enablo team, I would not have known where to start.
The way Enablo led the project was a testament to how Anytime Fitness could be rolling out projects.The tasks were clear, and it inspired us to execute things better. If we could mirror what Enablo has done for us on Workplace, we would surely be setting the benchmark for our communication at the highest standard in the future.”
Rob Hale – General Manager, Anytime Fitness Australia
Looking to whip your workplace culture into shape?
At Enablo, we help leading organizations like Anytime Fitness digitize the world of work. Through our partnerships with Workplace from Meta, Asana and Google Workspace, we’ve helped hundreds of organizations transform their culture and the way they work. Get in touch if you are a health and fitness franchise looking to whip your digital experience into shape! We’ll show you how to break unhealthy workplace habits and keep you accountable with the tools you need to help transform workplace culture for your distributed workforce.