Staffing Oops: How to Fix a Bad Hire at Your Fitness Business

As a fitness business owner, you know the feeling. Hiring a new team member, whether it’s a coach, GM, admin, or otherwise, means your team is growing. It feels like sunshine and rainbows. And you’re 100 percent confident you’ll never need to Google, “How to fix a bad hire.”

Your new team member showed up on time for the interview and said all the right things. They felt like the perfect fit to help you keep building a strong gym culture. More sunshine. More rainbows. Now two months later, you’re wondering how you read the situation wrong and dreading the conversation you now need to have.

If you’re unsure about how to fix a bad hire, we’ve got you covered. And it’s not complicated—you simply need to figure out what’s broken. Because “this isn’t working” and “this person is wrong for the job” aren’t necessarily the same problem. And therefore, they don’t have the same fix. Let’s do this.

Is the Bad Hire the Person or the Seat?

Before you write anyone up or start drafting a resignation conversation, it helps to separate two questions: Is this the right person? And are they in the right seat?

The “right person” is actually a values question. In a spreadsheet (or get the template below), list your team down one side and your core values across the top. Then rate each person on how consistently they live those values day to day. Don’t overthink this part. Your gut reaction is usually correct, and most teams find that a reasonable standard is mostly positive ratings with no outright misses.

The “right seat” is a different question. This one comes down to three things:

1. Does this person understand the role and how it fits into your fitness business growth strategies?
2. Do they actually want this job (and not just the paycheck or the title)?
3. Do they have the time, skill, and mental bandwidth to do it well?

If they’re in the right seat, you need to be able to answer yes to all three of these questions. Two out of three isn’t enough because that gap usually creates the friction you’re feeling.

GET THE FREE TEMPLATE: Download the How to Build a Team that Doesn’t Need You For Everything guide that includes everything you need for this exercise.

The Answer Can Help You with How to Fix a Bad Hire

In order to figure out how to fix a bad hire in this situation, take the answers to the question above and use them to place your new team member in one of these three categories:

• Right person, wrong seat. They believe in what you’re building but they’re miscast. Consider moving them to a role that fits instead of losing them entirely.
• Wrong person, right seat. Admittedly, this is the hardest one. Your new team member might hit their numbers or show up reliably, but something about how they operate is wearing on your culture. Left alone, it tells your best people that your values are optional.
• Wrong person, wrong seat. Even though this makes the decision easier, the conversation might be the hardest part. Ultimately though, it’s time to part ways. It might not feel good, but it’s usually the fastest way for both of you to land somewhere better.

This exercise is designed to take your vague feeling that ‘something’s off’ and turn it into the starting point for a conversation. Because oftentimes, the growth of your fitness business and the thriving gym community you’ve build can depend on it.

How to Fix a Bad Hire Before You Ever Posted the Job

A lot of hiring mistakes get set in motion before the job ad even goes up, because the seat itself was never clearly defined. To avoid ever having to figure out how to fix a bad hire, start with an accountability chart.

An accountability chart forces you to design the seats your business actually needs before you figure out who’s going to fill them. It’s a chart of your fitness business, built independent of who currently works there.

There are three parts to the accountability chart, and structure comes first. The names get filled in later, so you’re not just formalizing whatever org chart you happen to have out of habit. In other words, you don’t build a seat around a person just because they’re loyal or convenient. Because that’s how a seat turns into a favor, and the work itself still won’t have a real owner. Every seat gets exactly one accountable name. Two people sharing responsibility for the same seat usually means nobody really owns it.

​GET THE FREE TEMPLATE: Download the How to Build a Team that Doesn’t Need You For Everything guide that includes everything you need for this exercise.

When you make hiring decisions for a seat that’s been clearly defined, candidates understand the role that they’re applying for. And more importantly, you know exactly how you’re evaluating them. On the flip side, hiring for a vague title and job description is a fast track to that “How to fix a bad hire” Google search.

How to Fix a Bad Hire Now, then Fix the System

If you’ve found yourself in the middle of a hiring mistake, start by using the values and seat questions above to figure out exactly what’s off. Then have the conversation your answers point you toward.

To avoid being in this situation in the future, the next step is building your accountability chart. It’s not uncommon for fitness business owners to think they don’t need it, but that’s how the same hiring mistake can keep getting repeated over time.

Want the full templates for both of these tools, plus a complete hiring and onboarding system? Go download the free guide, How to Build a Team That Doesn’t Need You for Everything. You’ll get the worksheets to start building your seats, so you never need to figure out how to fix a bad hire again.

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Watch the webinar: Wodify’s Grace Bettino and Business For Unicorns founder Mark Fisher recently led the Get Out of the Way: How to Build a Team That Doesn’t Need You for Everything webinar.

More reading: Hiring the right team can help you go from coach to CEO and start focusing on the growth of your business! Get all the details in the Boutique Studio Owner’s 12-Month Plan to Go from Coach to CEO.