Pumping Up Franchise Performance:
Glow Brands’ Planet Fitness® Clubs Save Time and Strengthen Member Experience Through Consolidated Communication and Policy Management.
The Numbers
40 Store Locations
More Than 600 Employees
Saved over $282,560 Annually
A Unique Solution For a Unique Company
Going to the gym can be intimidating, even if you are not new to exercise. Kueber Fitness is a franchisee of Planet Fitness and operates 40 Planet Fitness clubs. Planet Fitness strives to provide an environment where anyone can be comfortable. Planet Fitness is one of the largest and fastest-growing fitness center franchisors and operators in the United States. With its Judgement Free Zone®, the brand hopes to enhance people’s lives and create a healthier world by advancing physical, emotional and planet health. Fulfilling its mission requires clean and safe facilities and well-trained employees.
The brand has seen exponential growth over the last few years — franchisee Glow Brands broke revenue and membership records at its 40 locations in 2022. With more people going to the gym, the fitness clubs are under more pressure to provide consistent and quality client service to every member. Planet Fitness clubs were Glow Brands’ first brand to adopt Woven, consolidating administrative functions to enhance focus on customer experience with Woven saving Glow Brands more than a quarter million dollars per year across its Planet Fitness clubs.
“It is a huge time saver. And, of course, time is money. Our employees are performing tasks that improve the club and member experience rather than managing paperwork,” said Jeremy Smith, Kueber Fitness Vice President of Operations.
Running from Platform to Platform
Like many companies, Glow Brands’ Planet Fitness clubs had many systems for essential functions. Employees accessed one portal for documents and received additional information via email, not to mention physical papers. Staff also used a franchise management website and a separate platform to report maintenance issues. Audits required two points of entry — a website and a spreadsheet.
The time employees spent jumping between different programs could be used more productively for working with members, cleaning, and other essential tasks. Additionally, reporting and auditing were tedious and sometimes even outdated. Because of this, opportunities for improvement may have gone unidentified, and some issues required extended time to resolve.
Communicating new policies required a game of telephone. Corporate would relay a message or policy change to general managers, who would be responsible for passing the information down the chain of command. This manual system created openings for delayed notification or even dropped communication.
Lifting Club Performance through Strengthened Communication and Administration
Glow Brands turned to Woven for a solution to its administrative platform sprawl in 2018. Woven worked with Glow Brands to create a solution combining all functions into a single location. Employees could access and acknowledge policies, manage, and monitor audits, file maintenance requests and work orders, and run reports without switching programs.
Woven removes the middleman in communication. Managers no longer need to pass down information — everyone receives it through Woven at the same time. The platform also gives managers more control over their policies with the ability to adjust and distribute in the same place.
Using Woven
for Compliance and Policy Acknowledgement
“One of the capabilities we love the most about Woven is the policy acknowledgment because it replaced an extensive manual process.” — Jeremy Smith, Glow Brands VP of Operations (Kueber Fitness)
- Before Woven, managers had to print and deliver a policy form to every employee. Then each employee had to sign it, and managers had to upload all the documents. Figuring out who had outstanding forms required checking each person’s record individually.
- With Woven, managers can simultaneously distribute the policy to everyone digitally. Employees can acknowledge it right in the platform. The program can run reports to identify any incomplete forms. Woven also allows managers to provide one-off policy reminders, such as uniform rules, to specific employees without extensive paperwork.
Woven removes the middleman in communication. Managers no longer need to pass down information — everyone receives it through Woven at the same time. The platform also gives managers more control over their policies with the ability to adjust and distribute in the same place.
“I can send messages to every single employee within Planet Fitness in the amount of time it takes me to upload the policy and click send. This is a big win for both managers and employees,” said Smith.
With this streamlined communication, employees are better prepared for emergencies and remain updated on best practices.
Easy-to-access maintenance and work order entry led to faster repairs. With a simple and intuitive interface, employees can quickly relay problems and even upload pictures. The maintenance staff can then provide instructions, order parts, and schedule technicians when necessary, and Woven keeps the lines of communication open for follow-ups.
Woven’s audit feature makes general manager checklists easier to complete and send to required parties, leading to better productivity and follow-up in clubs. Executives can quickly access reports to check audit completion and identify recurring issues and successes.
“Woven allows club and company leaders to more quickly get a snapshot of what's happening within our clubs to make necessary adjustments,” said Smith. “Problems can be immediately addressed, resulting in better service for our members.”
Sprinting to the Future
Glow Brands is conducting a tiered rollout of Woven’s scheduling function to its Planet Fitness clubs. Rather than creating schedules with worksheets and time off requests, managers can access all information in one place and automate much of the process. As soon as the schedule is done, Woven sends it out to all the employees, helping to remove issues related to people not seeing a posted paper schedule. Woven is currently working with Glow Brands to adjust its scheduling software to work with Planet Fitness’s unique 24-hour-a-day operations. Clubs already testing the feature report success.
Executive Overview
Industry: Health and Fitness
Locations: 40
Employees: ~600
Use Cases: Communication, knowledge management, policy management, executive reporting, location audits, work orders, incident reporting.
Products Used: Woven
Key Results:
- Improved club cleanliness, maintenance, and safety.
- Saved club, district, and regional managers two to six hours a week.
- Reduced annual costs by $7,064 per location, totaling $282,560 across all of Glow Brands’ Planet Fitness clubs.
- Streamlined policy management by eliminating manual processes.
- Enabled faster maintenance and work order responses.
- Facilitated more efficient and standardized communication with more than 600 employees at all locations.
- Provided a more holistic view of club performance.
Key Discoveries:
- Woven eliminated the need for multiple systems and logins and created operational function access in a single platform.
- Club cleanliness, maintenance, and safety improved due to less time spent on administrative tasks, faster response times and universal policy communication.
- Increased efficiency created significant cost savings.
- Messages and policies were delivered in one step, eliminating managers' need to act as a middleman.
- Auditing helped resolve issues and identify areas for improvement.
