We’ve spent the last 15 years obsessing over the customer experience, and rightly so. We’ve built mobile apps for bookings. We’ve created seamless payment processing. We’ve designed beautiful facilities with Instagram-worthy changing rooms and coffee bars that rival high street chains.
The front of house has never looked better.
But walk through the staff entrance, head to the office, and open the duty manager’s desk drawer. You’ll likely find a stack of paper checklists, a folder of unsigned training records, and a USB stick labelled “important documents backup 2019.”
The back of house is where the revolution hasn’t reached yet.
Here’s why that matters more than you might think, and why fixing it might be the most important investment you make this year.
Everyone’s Fighting the Same Front-of-House Battle
Let’s acknowledge what’s happened in leisure over the past decade. The technology arms race for customer-facing systems has been fierce and expensive. Every leisure centre now has broadly similar digital capabilities because everyone’s bought similar software.
Your members can book online. So can everyone else’s. You’ve got a mobile app. So does the competition. You send automated marketing emails. They do too.
This is what economists call competitive parity. When everyone has the same capabilities, those capabilities stop being competitive advantages. They become baseline expectations. Essential, but not differentiating.
So where’s the next competitive advantage going to come from?
Not from a flashier booking system. Not from another customer app feature. Not from your social media presence, unless you’re genuinely brilliant at it.
The next competitive advantage comes from operational excellence. It comes from running your facility so efficiently, so safely, and so consistently that you deliver experiences your competitors simply can’t match.
Think about it. When a member arrives for their swim, they’re not impressed by your booking system anymore. That’s just expected. They’re impressed (or not) by whether the changing rooms are clean, whether the water temperature is right, whether the instructor knows their name, and whether everything feels safe and well-run.
All of that happens because of back-of-house operations.
The Hidden Costs of Poor Operations
Most leisure centres dramatically underestimate what poor operations are costing them. Not because they’re bad at maths, but because the costs aren’t obvious line items in the budget.
Consider staff turnover. The leisure industry has notoriously high churn rates, particularly for part-time and casual staff. We accept this as inevitable, but we shouldn’t.
When we’ve asked departing staff why they’re leaving, “found something better” usually translates to “found somewhere less chaotic.” People leave when they feel unsupported, when they don’t know what they’re supposed to do, when systems don’t work, and when every shift feels like fighting through administrative quicksand.
Poor operations create a culture of stress. Stress drives turnover. Turnover drives recruitment costs, training costs, and the hidden cost of inexperienced staff delivering below-par service. The cycle perpetuates itself.
Or consider incident response. When something goes wrong—and something always goes wrong eventually—your response speed matters enormously. The difference between a minor incident and a major crisis often comes down to whether information flows quickly and whether the right people know what to do.
This depends entirely on operational systems. Can you quickly access the relevant procedures? Do staff know their responsibilities? Can you track what actions have been taken? Can you generate accurate reports for insurers or regulators?
Centres with poor operational infrastructure turn minor incidents into major problems through slow, confused responses. Centres with strong operational infrastructure contain problems quickly.
The financial impact might not show up as a clear budget line, but it shows up in insurance premiums, legal costs, and reputation damage.
Then there’s the opportunity cost. Every hour your managers spend searching for documents, chasing signatures, or manually compiling reports is an hour they’re not improving your operation. The collective time wasted on administrative friction across UK leisure centres would boggle your mind if anyone calculated it properly.
What Operational Excellence Actually Looks Like
Let’s paint a picture of what excellent back-of-house operations feel like, because many leisure managers have never experienced it.
It’s 7am. The opening duty manager arrives and opens their phone. The dashboard shows that yesterday’s closing checks were completed, overnight cleaning was signed off, and this morning’s pool tests are scheduled. Three staff members have training expiring in the next month, so renewal courses need booking. There’s one outstanding maintenance issue from Friday that needs chasing.
The manager knows all of this before they’ve unlocked the front door. There are no surprises. There’s no scrambling. There’s a clear plan for the day.
At 9am, a member slips in the changing room. Staff follow the exact incident procedure because it’s on their phones, not in a folder somewhere. Photos are taken. Witnesses are recorded. The incident report is completed digitally within minutes. The manager is automatically notified. First aid is properly documented. The area is dealt with immediately.
By 9:30am, the facilities coordinator has received the incident report, logged the maintenance requirement, and scheduled repair. The member has been called, checked on, and their concerns addressed. If this becomes an insurance matter, you’ve got comprehensive documentation timestamped and photograph-backed.
This is what operational excellence looks like. Problems still happen—they always will—but they’re managed systematically rather than frantically.
At 2pm, an inspector arrives unannounced. Instead of panic, the manager pulls up the compliance dashboard. Pool test records for the past three months: here they are. Training certificates for all staff: all current. Risk assessments: reviewed last month. Maintenance logs: comprehensive and up to date.
The inspection that would have caused sleepless nights becomes a routine conversation. You’re not scrambling to prove compliance. You’re demonstrating it.
By 5pm, the manager leaves on time because they haven’t spent three hours dealing with administrative chaos. They’ve spent the day on the gym floor, talking to members, supporting staff, and solving actual operational challenges.
This isn’t fantasy. This is what happens when back-of-house operations receive the same investment and attention that front-of-house operations have received.
Why Operations Excellence Drives Everything Else
There’s a direct line between operational excellence and business performance. Not a vague, hand-wavy connection. A direct, measurable line.
Operational excellence reduces costs through efficiency. You need fewer managers because each manager can handle more. You need fewer crisis interventions because problems are prevented. You spend less time on compliance because it’s continuous rather than cramming before inspections.
Operational excellence improves safety. When procedures are clear, accessible, and followed, accidents reduce. When training is tracked systematically, competency gaps close. When incidents are managed properly, minor issues don’t become major ones.
Operational excellence improves retention. Staff stay longer when systems support them rather than fighting them. Members stay longer when their experience is consistently good because your operation runs smoothly.
Operational excellence creates capacity. When managers aren’t drowning in administration, they can focus on innovation, member engagement, and team development. The difference between a centre that’s treading water and one that’s thriving often comes down to whether leadership has the capacity to think beyond daily survival.
Here’s the kicker: operational excellence is harder for competitors to copy than customer-facing features. Your competitor can buy the same booking software you use. They can’t buy your operational culture, your refined procedures, or your systematised approach to excellence.
When you invest in operations, you’re building a competitive advantage that’s sustainable precisely because it’s not just about buying technology. It’s about changing how your entire facility works.
The Implementation Challenge
The honest truth? Transforming back-of-house operations is harder than implementing a booking system.
Not technically harder. Actually, it’s often technically simpler. But culturally harder.
Booking systems get bought because members demand them and competitors have them. There’s clear external pressure. Operational systems get bought when leadership recognises internal dysfunction and decides to fix it. That requires self-awareness and willingness to change.
There’s also the “we’ve always done it this way” challenge. Your team has workarounds for the broken systems. They know where the important documents are hidden. They’ve memorised who to call when things go wrong. They’ve adapted to dysfunction.
Changing this requires explaining why doing things differently will make their lives better, then proving it. It requires training. It requires patience. It requires leadership that stays committed when the initial disruption happens.
But here’s what we’ve learned from centres that have made this transformation: the resistance melts fast when people experience the benefits personally. When a duty manager discovers they can complete their opening checks in 10 minutes instead of 45, they become an advocate. When an instructor can find the procedure they need in five seconds instead of five phone calls, they’re sold.
The trick is getting through the initial change period without losing momentum.
Starting the Revolution in Your Centre
You don’t need to transform everything overnight. In fact, trying to do so usually causes more disruption than success.
Start with the biggest pain point. For most centres, that’s either task management (nobody knows what’s been done and what hasn’t) or training compliance (it’s a constant headache). Pick one area and fix it properly.
Don’t just digitise broken processes. That’s swapping paper chaos for digital chaos. Redesign the process, then digitise the better version.
Get your team involved early. The people doing the work know where the problems are. Listen to them. When they help design the solution, they own it.
Measure the impact. Track how much time gets saved. Count how many missed tasks reduce. Monitor how quickly incidents get resolved. Make the benefits visible so everyone can see that the investment is working.
Once one area is working smoothly, the next becomes easier. Success builds momentum. Teams start asking, “When can we sort out the other stuff?” rather than resisting change.
The Future Belongs to Operational Excellence
The leisure centres that thrive over the next decade won’t be the ones with the flashiest customer app. They’ll be the ones that run brilliantly behind the scenes.
They’ll have lower costs because efficiency compounds. They’ll have better safety records because systems prevent problems. They’ll retain staff longer because culture attracts talent. They’ll deliver consistent excellence because operations enable it.
Most importantly, they’ll have created a competitive advantage that’s sustainable. Whilst everyone else is still buying the same front-of-house technology, these centres will have built operational infrastructure that’s genuinely difficult to replicate.
The back-of-house revolution is starting. The question isn’t whether it will happen. It’s whether you’ll lead it or follow it.
Every revolution starts with someone deciding that the current way isn’t good enough. That the gap between how things are and how they could be is worth bridging.
Your front-of-house is brilliant. It’s time your back-of-house matched it.
Book a demo of OpsPal Digital Operations Software
Sources: This blog post reflects insights from operational analysis of UK leisure facilities and operational management principles. Recommendations are based on patterns observed across the leisure management sector and OpsPal’s experience with operational transformation projects.
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