How we roll with Day Staff at the Club

June 1, 2023

Dear Members,

It’s been a month of fun with our 25th Anniversary activities.  We have issued a great deal of raffle tickets from our front desk ‘Instant Trivia’ contests and for many members getting LOTS of boxes stamped on their BHC Bingo Cards.  The drawing for the AirPod Pros and other neat prizes will be this coming Monday (6/5).

There is still time on our Discover Ballard – Scavenger Hunt that ends at noon on June 10th. For the Scavenger Hunt, we will be raffling off groups of $25 gift cards given to us from our favorite Ballard merchants where we display clues to help find the scavenger items. Congratulations to Jane McGehee for being the first to find all 25 items on the Hunt!

A bit ago I overheard someone say we have high turnover with our day staff at BHC. Hearing that made me want to state some details about how things work at BHC with our day staff. It may appear we have high “turnover” but it’s our normal mode of operation to improve our staff’s experience at BHC and to help prepare them for their next step in their work life.

We did have 4 trainers leave within a couple of months of each other earlier this year. But all for good reasons. Jensen had just graduated WSU back in May of 2021 when she came to BHC to work the front desk and to work toward becoming a personal trainer.  Her plan was to work at BHC to support herself while going through a master’s program to become a professional therapist. She became a trainer and gradually worked off the front desk, doing as much personal training as she could handle. She completed her goal of achieving her masters and left BHC with a great job as a full-time therapist.  Netto came to BHC in August of 2019 to work at the front desk and eventually became a personal trainer.  Once he got his Personal Training Certification, he slowly grew his list of clients to the point he was as busy as he could handle with up to 30 hours a week of training clients. Netto moved up to take on a corporate level training management job at a health club chain. Kyler came to BHC to work the front desk while attending culinary school in downtown Seattle. With this PT and Nutrition Coach certification, he helped many clients at BHC achieve their fitness and nutrition goals and worked himself off the desk. Kyler recently left BHC to take on a full-time position at Children’s Hospital in their nutrition department and is also helping BHC to set up a new nutrition coaching offering. Alicia worked at both the front desk and had several personal training clients and decided to leave Seattle and move back home to Boise.

With our current staff, Olivia was hired in July 2021 to work the front desk and then became a personal trainer and now all of her time at BHC is doing personal training. Brenda was a member that we talked into working the front desk a while ago and then she became a very busy certified personal trainer. Brenda also just passed her NASM Nutrition Coach certification! Ivana came to BHC in September of 2021 as a personal trainer and to work the front desk. She is now our Operations Manager and helps manage the club along with personal training and being a class instructor. Gabby was hired earlier this year and is an experienced personal trainer that works both the front desk work and PT. She has now reduced her front desk time to focus more on her growing personal training and as her new role of our Personal Training Coordinator. Danny came to BHC to work the front desk but has now evolved into also being a trainer, so he has started replacing front desk hours with personal training.

Clyde and Christian have been our evening front desk guys, and both are at different stages with their personal training certification efforts.  Ciara has been solid at the front desk since coming to BHC in April of 2021 and now has taken additional responsibilities of facilities training with our new hires because of how well she does her job.

Sal just came on board to work at the front desk and is a personal trainer. MacKenzie, Miranda and Charlotte work the front desk with the option to pursue a personal training and/or a nutrition coach certification.

The intent of how we do things at BHC is to help our staff improve their job and their life while we have them working for the Club. Besides the fact that providing personal training to individuals is a very rewarding experience it also pays about twice as much as the wage working the front desk. So those are 2 compelling reasons to become a personal trainer at BHC. And we also pay 50% of the cost of getting this certification once an employee passes the certification exam.

As General Manager and the person that hires day staff to work at BHC, it would be much easier not to have to constantly hire, but the evolution of improvement in people’s jobs at the Club have been a great benefit to those that spend time working here and considering the cost of living where we do, this is an important feature of the job at BHC.

I certainly do not want to ignore the great work of our Overnight Crew and Class Instructors, but I felt it was important to spend this time explaining how things worked with our day staff at the Club.

Thank you for being a member of BHC and we look forward to being here for you for another 25 years!

Sincerely,

Pat Gilbrough
Owner, General Manager
Ballard Health Club
pat@ballardhealthclub.com