As manager of a swim school, overseeing your staff is one of the many aspects of your role. Of course, if you experience high rates of turnover, you’re spending even more of your extremely valuable time finding, hiring, and training new staff members — never mind the extra work that comes with the in-between time. In order to discourage high turnover rates we can’t overstate the importance of finding well-qualified staff members. Once you have secured high-quality staff members, you want to do your best to keep them invested in your swim school instead of wanting to jump ship to the swim school down the road. Two key ways to keep your staff members happy is to provide them with plenty of opportunities for growth and to allow them to pursue a healthy work-life balance.
Provide Opportunities for Professional Growth
Your swim school instructors are already great at what they do! But there’s one thing that’s always true about the great ones: they still want to grow. When you encourage them to pursue professional development opportunities, they’ll see you as an ally in their career and appreciate your investment in them. Of course, your swim students will benefit too, and the added expertise will reflect well on your swim school. Really, when your instructors pursue added training, everyone will benefit! You can create an environment where professional growth is encouraged by informing staff members of such opportunities and offering funding for that training. If you’re able to offer pay for time spent in training, that would sweeten the deal even more!
Jackrabbit Class software can help you establish an environment that fosters professional growth in several ways. First, through the Staff Portal, you can inform staff members of upcoming opportunities. You can also use it to post congratulations for those who complete training sessions and update parents of staff member achievements. Because Jackrabbit will save your swim school money by automating many administrative tasks you may be currently paying an administrative assistant to do, we may also be able to help you find money to help fund your instructors’ professional pursuits.
Pursue a Healthy Work-Life Balance
When employees look to leave their current employers, many of them blame the inability to pursue a healthy work-life balance as a major contributing factor. As a swim school director, you can help ensure that your instructors don’t feel as if they can’t have a life outside your swim school. One way you can do this is by clearly communicating your expectations and needs during the interview process. Another way is to inform them well in advance about the occasional need for overtime.
Because of its online platform, Jackrabbit Class software can help your staff members invest minimal time when all they need to do is send out a message to parents, find contact information for a single student, or double check the swim school schedule. Because they’ll be able to do that from any device, they won’t have to make extra trips into the office when something unforeseen comes up.
Continue reading with Part 2.
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