Aspire Leisure Centre: Dean Tearle, Efficiency Hero, wins £250

At Gladstone, we will often use phrases like “frees up front of house staff”, or “decreases admin time” because we know that no matter what great technology we provide, no matter what features we come up with, that people will always be at the heart of your business.

Your staff are your greatest asset, greeting a prospective member with a cheerful smile can mean the difference between new revenue for you and new revenue for a competitor. People make a business; they define the culture, the shared values and ultimately, they control the success of your endeavours.

That’s why it is important to choose the right people and recently we heard about someone who is using Gladstone’s management tools to drive his business to growth, to profit and to greater success.

Dean Tearle, Centre Manager at Aspire Leisure Centre in Stanmore has been an inspiration and motivation behind the modernisation and development of his centre. Dean was nominated as a hero by Alison Larkin who works in the same centre as the Customer Service Team Leader to the extent that Alison’s glowing feedback has won Dean a Gladstone Innovation Award.

Dean has been working with the tools he has available to enhance customer experience and therefore to increase retention. Additionally, he has been working to create a more efficient centre by driving bookings online and making sure that staff are really focussing on where they can make the most difference.

The issues facing Aspire a few years ago are not unusual in the leisure industry: class utilisation wasn’t as good as  it could have been, people were able to “sneak” into classes without booking and paying, and additionally the number of documents being printed was contributing to growing paper and ink bills, not to mention wasting people’s time with unneeded filing.

Dean worked with his sales manager at Gladstone to work out the source of the centre’s problems and to create a strategy to eliminate the issues. The first project on the list was to implement Gladstone360 on four iPads and then to train front of house staff on the system. Almost immediately after kicking this off, staff noticed how much more efficient they were able to be; member’s photos could be taken from the built in camera, documents like PAR-Qs no longer needed to be printed.

Gladstone360 on the iPads has also helped to curb the number of people who thought they could sneak into classes- these devices can all run the class check-in functionality which enables instructors to see images of those booked on to attend the class.

“Dean is so creative and comes up with some fantastic ideas and then makes them happen. The team all buy into these ideas and they overall have a positive impact on our members.”  -Leigh Hewitt, Facilities Manager at Aspire.

With the vast amount of paper use now at a reasonable amount and fewer class infringements, Dean moved onto what he saw was his next challenge: he realised that by driving bookings to a mobile app, then his staff would be far less tied up in transactional business and be able to really add value where they were needed. Dean took the leap with MobilePro, and centre staff and end users have never looked back.

Class occupancy has gone up by 18%, bookings have been driven away from the centre and the phone and customers are now enjoying a far smoother in app experience.

Dean’s leadership by example is an inspiration that has not only made his centre an excellent place to work out, but also an excellent place to work. Dean set out with a goal in mind, chose the right tools for the job and then made sure his whole team was bought into the solution.