A new instructor “Subs Bench” is helping Village Hotels recruit beyond its existing networks, strengthen compliance and build group exercise timetables around member demand rather than instructor availability.
There is a familiar problem in group exercise: sometimes the timetable you want and the instructors you can actually find are two quite different things.
For Village Hotels, that gap has become the focus of a wider recruitment experiment. After using CoverMe across its 34 clubs for the past year to manage instructor cover, the operator has worked with the platform to develop a “Subs Bench” — a pool of pre-vetted, qualified and insured instructors available to individual clubs.
What started as a practical way of finding somebody when an instructor could not teach has therefore moved into something more strategic: group exercise instructor recruitment.
Rather than simply filling gaps after they appear, Village Hotels is using the system to find instructors in disciplines its clubs actively want to add to their timetables.
Building the timetable first
Traditionally, recruiting freelance group exercise instructors can involve a considerable amount of improvisation.
Village Hotels’ club managers had relied on word of mouth, social media, personal contacts and, occasionally, members interested in retraining as instructors. Those routes can work, but they also leave operators dependent on whoever happens to be visible or available locally.
The Subs Bench pilot took a different approach.
Ten Village Hotels clubs with the greatest recruitment needs identified the instructor types they found hardest to source. Those requirements were considered alongside existing timetables and the group’s broader standards, producing a recruitment brief for CoverMe.
The response was substantial. More than 230 fitness professionals applied in under 30 days, with club managers selecting 56% of applicants to join their respective benches.
That matters because the aim is not simply to accumulate names. It is to give clubs enough depth to make programming decisions based on demand rather than scarcity.
Diana Wright, Brand Group Fitness Manager for Village Hotels, says: “The partnership with CoverMe has created a whole new recruitment pipeline, giving us access to instructors we may never otherwise have found. Some of these will now go on to secure permanent places on our club timetables.”
From emergency cover to permanent classes
Regular instructors still get first opportunity to cover classes. The Subs Bench comes into play when additional support is needed.
But its more interesting function sits beyond emergency cover.
An instructor can arrive at a club through a cover opportunity, demonstrate that they fit the programme and potentially move into a permanent timetable slot. In effect, cover becomes a working introduction rather than merely a last-minute rescue operation.
That is particularly useful in specialist disciplines where suitably qualified instructors may be harder to find.
“CoverMe is helping us discover talented instructors and is particularly valuable in specialist areas like Reformer Pilates,” Wright says. “Rather than accepting we can’t offer a class because we can’t find the right instructor, we can now proactively search for the talent we need.”
It changes the sequence of the programming decision. Instead of asking what classes can be offered with the instructors already available, a club can decide what its members need and then recruit towards that timetable.
For Village Hotels, the opening of its Reading club provided an early example.
“Working with CoverMe, our aim is to design the best possible timetable for each club based on its members and demand, and then find the best instructors to deliver it. The impact was clear when we opened the Reading club. For the first time, we could build the timetable we actually wanted and recruit specifically into those slots.”
A wider pool reduces dependency
Instructor shortages create problems beyond an empty space on the studio floor.
A club relying heavily on a relatively small group of people has little room for illness, holidays, timetable changes or expansion. A broader pool gives managers more options and reduces the risk that one unavailable instructor becomes a cancelled class.
For new clubs, it also offers a way of building an instructor workforce against a defined standard from the outset rather than assembling it piecemeal after opening.
That matters across an estate stretching from Eastleigh to Aberdeen, where maintaining consistency involves more than finding somebody with an hour free on a Tuesday evening.
Compliance moves out of the spreadsheet
Recruitment is only half of the issue. Operators also need confidence that the instructor stepping into the studio has the appropriate qualifications and insurance.
For Wright, that administrative element is one of the strongest arguments for the platform.
“For me it’s a compliance tool. Ensuring every instructor is appropriately qualified and insured is a major responsibility. Previously that relied heavily on individual clubs, but with CoverMe, every instructor’s qualifications and insurance are verified by a human before they’re available on the platform.
It’s a safer, more robust way to manage the instructor workforce and means clubs can focus on delivering great group exercise experiences rather than constantly worrying about the admin associated with checking and managing instructor documentation.”
Centralising those checks does not make instructor recruitment glamorous. Nothing involving insurance documents has ever managed that particular feat. It does, however, address a part of group exercise operations that becomes increasingly difficult to manage consistently as an estate grows.
The Subs Bench rolls out across Village Hotels
Following the 10-club pilot, Village Hotels is now extending the Subs Bench across the rest of its estate.
CoverMe is also making the functionality available to other operators.
“The concept was developed around the challenges identified by the Village Hotels team, but the functionality is available to all CoverMe operators,” says Lou Crossland, Chief Commercial Officer for CoverMe. “It’s not simply about sending out a request when someone calls in sick.
Operators can widen their access to qualified instructors, improve the quality and consistency of cover and proactively build a recruitment pipeline around the needs of individual clubs, while we manage all the compliance on their behalf.”
The distinction is important. Finding emergency cover solves today’s staffing problem. Building a reliable pool of instructors may help solve tomorrow’s timetable as well.
For group exercise operators, that is potentially the more valuable shift.
