OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE
OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE
It was a big risk for us to introduce contracts, as lesson programmes do fluctuate, but we wanted to address the issue of swim teachers being seen as casual staff. Many have been with us on the same hours for years, so we wanted to give them flexibility on how they’re employed by us. Around 20 per cent of our swim teachers are now on a You Choose contract and we expect this to rise as more people recognise the benefits of holiday pay and so on.
It was a big risk for us to introduce contracts, but we wanted to address the issue of swim teachers being seen as casual staff
How is casual swimming performing? Pools are one of our key USPs versus our low-cost competitors, so we’re strongly promoting them as part of our core offer, stressing that we’re more than just a gym. We have a really strong gym + swim offer for adults who want to swim lanes, with a good chunk of our income coming from casual swimming. We also know that members who swim with us, stay with us for longer. We’re therefore carefully reviewing pool programmes to ensure there’s something for everybody across a good choice of times. People lead busy lives and if there are limited options to come and swim – if pools are taken up with lessons and clubs – they’re going to vote with their feet and go elsewhere. The young adult market is quite price-led and focused on health and fitness, so our primary audiences for casual swim are families, young people and older adults. Across the sector, I believe families have been somewhat neglected recently. Faced with escalating costs, operators have had to look at operational efficiencies and some have opted for fitness swimming – where you can have just one lifeguard – over family swimming that requires two. That’s understandable, but we feel it’s really important that we serve the whole community. We’re therefore making sure our programming includes a good family swimming offer, from ‘Kids Swim for a Quid’ over the summer holidays to the addition of more splash
The new structure of our swimming lessons promotes workforce development and teamwork right there on the poolside
The programme has received external endorsement by the IFSTA and is recognised by the RLSS (UK) from a water safety perspective. It has been a really positive evolution, which made the drop-off last spring even more of a shock. No doubt Ramadan and the timings of Easter were contributing factors, but we were nevertheless spurred to look at what needed to change. The result has been a major focus on quality and training, reviewing job roles, refreshing training plans – including more face-to-face engagement – empowering our GMs with best practice examples and ensuring every teacher understands our expectations. As part of this, we’ve reinforced the importance of asking parents for feedback, being available to speak to them and encouraging them to track their child’s progress. We’ve created a new marketing toolkit with a greater focus on retention. And we’ve refreshed our swim guarantee, whereby if children have been on our lesson programme
for two years and haven’t progressed as far as they should, parents can apply for some free lessons. Put simply, we’ve reminded customers that we’re here for them. We’ve also just completed an extensive mystery shopper project with Proinsight. Spanning all our centres, this looked not only at the customer journey but at the lesson experience too. We don’t yet have the full results, but we’re already addressing some feedback on the booking journey. Feedback on the lessons was generally very positive, to the point that currently over a third of the mystery shoppers – both in new and older pools – have
asked for their child to stay on the programme. Teacher shortages are less of an issue now – our partnership with the STA resulted in 850 new
qualifications being gained through our courses in 2024 – and once qualified, we continue to support our swim teachers with a good aquatics career pathway, regular CPD and the option of a contract for the hours they work.
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STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2023 STATE OF THE UK SWIMMING INDUSTRY REPORT 2025
STATE OF THE UK FITNESS INDUSTRY REPORT 2023
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STATE OF THE UK SWIMMING INDUSTRY REPORT 2025
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