By improving operational efficiency, reducing costs, and enhancing member satisfaction, your club can gain a competitive advantage and improve its bottom line.
For example, a club may identify that they are spending too much time and money on inventory management. The club can reduce costs and improve its financial performance by improving this process through automation or better inventory tracking.
Techniques for process improvement
You can use several techniques for process improvements, such as process mapping, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement methodologies like Six Sigma and Lean.
Ultimately all these techniques involve mapping and looking for areas to reduce waste or improve performance using data.
Mapping out processes is a simple and effective tool
If you're like me and you're a visual person, process mapping is a great way to find areas of improvement. Process mapping involves creating a visual representation of a process, from start to finish, to understand the steps involved and where improvements can be made.
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For example, a club may map out their hiring process and identify bottlenecks or unnecessary steps that can be eliminated to streamline the process and reduce hiring time.
Through past experiences, we found this process extremely valuable, never mind the optimisation of processes. The processes mapped in a simple PowerPoint diagram helped train staff and delegate tasks. We recommend setting aside some time for this activity.
Once done, you should not need to do it again or only make slight changes to optimise the workflows.
Goal-Setting and Tracking
By setting clear and achievable goals, club managers can ensure their efforts are focused and effective. During this part of the webinar, we will discuss the following:
Setting S.M.A.R.T. goals
Most of you would have heard of S.M.A.R.T. goals, which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. By setting goals that meet these criteria, club managers can ensure that they are clear and focused and that progress can be measured effectively.
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### Track your progress
Once goals have been set, tracking progress towards achieving them is important. A weekly meeting to review progress went a long way to ensuring we met our longer-term goals. Nothing is worse than getting to the end of the month and realising you forgot to do half of your planned tasks.
Tools we have discussed before, such as Trello and Asana, include features to track progress and task completion. Or even a simple spreadsheet with checkboxes may suffice to monitor where you stand.
Use KPIs to measure your success
The next one I would like to chat about is Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). KPIs can be used to measure progress towards achieving business goals. Monitoring these goals daily and weekly is important to adjust your strategy as business fluctuates.
In past roles, it was a weekly ritual to meet with my management team, review our KPIs, and discuss adjustments to our rosters/ ordering and marketing to meet our monthly goals.
Some common KPIs clubs track include:
- Membership growth
- Revenue growth
- Member engagement
- Employee retention
- Customer satisfaction
- Labour expenses
- COS
Using ClubsHR can help automate some of these processes and keep track of your progress.
Learn more about ClubsHR and what's new in the club's industry on our blog page.