Justice and the Job Hunt

Think back to your last job interview. You were probably asked the standard questions: certifications, professional experience, references, ethnicity, religion.

What’s that? You weren’t asked where you were born, where your parents were born, what religion you are and whether or not you are a Muslim?

Then your name must not be Sukdev Singh Dhaliwal.

Dhaliwal is a Sikh who won $24,000 in damages from Bally Total Fitness when a California judge ruled that the company denied him a job in 2004 on religious and ethnic grounds. He was born and raised in California, but, during the interview, Dhaliwal was asked about his religious and ethnic background, and later denied the job.

According to Wikipedia, a Sikh can be recognized by his turban or beard, or by a steel bracelet on the wrist. That, apparently, was enough to raise a red flag for Bally management, and enough to cause them to ignore this country’s most basic employment rights.

Bally Total Fitness needs to worry about more than its bottom line if its management can look at a man wearing a turban, notice the color of his skin, struggle with the pronunciation of his name – then decide that, based on these factors alone, he is not a candidate for employment.

Is Bally's alone in its discriminatory hiring practices, or is this issue more wide-spread in our industry? If this story shocks you (and especially if it doesn’t), it might be time to look at your own facility’s hiring process and guidelines. Do they follow the law?

Is a Big Fine in Your Future?

If you attended the Technology Summit at the IHRSA show in March, you may have been a little freaked out. Speakers Michael Scott Scudder, owner of MSS FitBiz, and John Whitworth, business development manager of Ambiron Trust Wave, told facility owners that, if they weren’t PCI Compliant by the end of March, they could be fined up to $100,000 by the Payment Card Industry (PCI). Yikes! Amid the doomsday talk and technical jargon, something Scudder said jumped out at me: Being fined that much could ruin a club’s entire business.

The basic idea is that credit card companies formed a group and created some standards in order to pass along the cost of fraudulent charges to you. They created the PCI Data Security Standard (DSS), which every company that uses credit cards must comply with. If you don’t, and a customer or employee uses someone else’s card number illegally, you get fined. Also, PCI could keep you from using credit cards at all, which would basically wipe out your business. To give you an idea of just how big this is, credit card usage (including debit cards) in membership transactions went from 35 percent in 2002 to 65 percent in 2007, according to Scudder.

To be compliant, fitness centers must better control how they get credit card information and store it. Do you have member card numbers in some filing cabinet that isn’t locked? That is a finable mistake. Many more rules exist, and they can be found at www.pcisecuritystandards.org.

Being non-compliant should scare you. It scares me, and I don’t even OWN a club. However, is it time for fitness centers to hit the panic button and scramble to find experts to help them avert a financial crisis? I think sensible clubs can calmly contact their bank and software company and make the necessary changes without losing any sleep. No freaking out required.

Is your facility PCI compliant? Do you even know what that is?

Will You Be Successful or Significant?

If you attended the IHRSA Convention this past March and sat in on Augie Nieto's presentation, From Success to Significance, you might be asking yourself, like I am, whether you are on the path in life to be successful or significant.

The truth is, we never really know what dots are going to connect in life to lead us to where our lives will ultimately end up — despite the decisions we make and chances we take along the way. Augie, pioneer of the first piece of cardio equipment, founder of Life Fitness, crusader in the quest to find a cure for Lou Gherig’s disease (ALS), and now legacy, is a keen example of that. But, he has learned that if you have a passion for something, no matter what path your life takes, the dots along the way always end up connecting. In his presentation, Augie explained, “You can’t look forward and connect the dots. You can’t look back. What you have to do is find a passion and the dots will connect.”

I often think of Augie’s presentation. His spirit, his honesty and his message truly touched me. Augie's dots connected because he had a passion. Through his passion for fitness, he strove to make people’s bodies stronger. Augie says that his dad once told him, “Take the biggest risk you can, early.” Augie did, and with the eventual success of the Lifecycle and of his company Life Fitness, he, himself, became successful. Now, with his passion for finding a cure for ALS, he is striving to help science and to stop the disease from afflicting others in the future. With the millions of dollars he has helped to raise to date through Augie’s Quest, scientific progress has been, and is still being, made, and Augie has progressed from being successful to being significant. “How do you go from being successful to significant?” asked Augie. “If you’re gone and you’re successful, you won’t be missed. If you’re gone and you’re significant, you will be missed.”

We could all learn a lesson from Augie. The fitness industry is all about passion. Have you pinpointed what, specifically, your passion is? Will you be successful in our industry, or significant to our industry?

“Success is never final,” says Augie. “Failure is never fatal. What matters is passion. And passion allows you to do what’s right and what’s wrong.”

The Magic Pill

You tell members there is no magic pill that makes them look and feel like their ideal selves. It takes hard work and discipline to achieve their goals, and looking for the easy way out usually just loops them right back to where they started.

It’s time to start taking your own advice
But let's be honest. Aren't you waiting for a magic pill, too? You want your facility to become more successful, but you’re waiting for equipment and other manufacturers to make it happen. You hope jazzier exer-tainment options and more interactive bells and whistles that will draw new members into your facility in droves.

Stop waiting, starting doing
Manufacturers are doing their part. There are more options out there than ever before. It’s up to you to build on what they’ve developed so that your fitness center is making the most of new technology.

One step further
Try taking the new features offered on fitness equipment one step further. Did you just invest in new iPod-compatible treadmills? Have your personal trainers record a new podcast each week, then offer it as a free download on your facility’s website. You’ll add value to a membership, draw traffic to your site, introduce your personal trainers to a wide group of members and put your club’s personal stamp on a really cool feature.

Did you purchase interactive equipment that mimics dancing or playing a video game? Don’t stop there! Hook up with a local charity and organize a Dance-A-Thon to raise money. Post an eye-catching High Score board by the video game machine. The equipment can only do so much; it’s up to you to create a buzz and make these new machines a real attraction.

I say forget about magic pills. You don’t need them.