Like many other health clubs and businesses around the nation, Life Time Inc. endured a challenging year in 2020.
But, by using Beekeeper’s app to reach, connect, and engage all of their employees, the team was able to:
- Quickly share authentic leadership messages directly from the executive team
- Distribute critical information to furloughed employees while ensuring compliance with government regulations
- Remain flexible and building business agility despite ever-changing guidelines around closing and re-opening
Let’s take a look at how Life Time navigated this tough environment and came out of it with a connected and engaged, frontline workforce.
Teaming Up With Beekeeper
Life Time Inc. is a pioneer in the health and wellness industry, with more than 150 locations in 41 markets throughout the U.S. and Canada. The company employs over 32,000 team members across its portfolio of health clubs, athletic events, and co-working spaces.
Given the nature of Life Time Inc.’s business, its frontline-majority workforce is widely dispersed. And in 2018, the team adopted Beekeeper as its frontline communication and collaboration tool to provide team members with the information they needed when they needed it, regardless of where they were.
“We launched Beekeeper in June 2018. Now that we’ve moved beyond the roll-out phase of Beekeeper, our primary goals at Life Time are around user stickiness and engagement.”
– Laura Kennedy, Internal Communications Manager, Life Time Inc.
Life Time has, on average, 60% of its team members active on the platform on a monthly basis, and about 45% of team members engaged weekly. And, before the pandemic, the company set a goal to increase those numbers by about 20-25%.
Sharing Transparent, Authentic Messages To Inspire Confidence
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Life Time took swift action to temporarily close their clubs at the recommendation of local governments. And, with the closures, the team knew they had to pivot their communication strategy quickly.
“Not only was it challenging from an operational standpoint, but we also knew there was going to be a lot of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety for our team members. We knew we needed to get the message right for them to reassure and maintain confidence.”
– Laura Kennedy, Internal Communications Manager, Life Time Inc.
To get ahead of employees’ concerns, Life Time’s Chairman, CEO, and Founder recorded a leadership message with other executive team members that was shared exclusively through Beekeeper.
The team received overwhelmingly positive feedback on their transparency and timeliness. As a result, the company’s most recent employee net promoter score (NPS) reached an all-time high.
What’s more Life Time achieved two other user engagement milestones in the process:
- Reached 1,600+ new logins in a single day in anticipation of the message
- The video received 25,000 views out of an employee base of 26,000
From that point on, Life Time prioritized direct, authentic messages from their leadership team shared exclusively through Beekeeper.
Complying With Furloughed Employee Communications
As the pandemic wore on, the Life Time team grappled with extended closures of their fitness centers.
The company made the difficult decision to furlough 90% of its staff. And, due to the complex regulations guiding company communications with furloughed employees, the team relied on Beekeeper’s flexibility to execute a new communications approach that prioritized:
- Deactivating all club, market, and in-center business unit-specific Streams
- Establishing a single source of truth via a “Company News” Stream in which all employees had access to need-to-know information and resources
- Creating 150+ group chats when it was time to activate their staggered re-opening plan
“The flexibility to be able to change how we communicated within Beekeeper – deactivating Streams, staying connected to team members, and finding creative ways to remain in compliance – was huge. It was very much a weight off of our minds in a difficult time.”
– Laura Kennedy, Internal Communications Manager, Life Time Inc.
With clubs starting to re-open at full (or close to) capacity, the team is re-focusing on their pre-COVID goals of enhancing user engagement and stickiness. To keep themselves accountable, the team will rely on Beekeeper’s analytics tools to share real-time progress on their goals with both field and corporate leaders.
“The biggest thing for us is the reporting and analytical capabilities within Beekeeper. We want to continue to take some of that trust and credibility we were able to build within the last year and apply that to working towards the user engagement and stickiness goals we set pre-COVID and are still pursuing at this point.”
– Laura Kennedy, Internal Communications Manager, Life Time Inc.
