The 2 ways to keep your employees
Note: My name is Tommy Alfinito and I own two gyms that are Crossfit affiliated under the name Hygge.fit. I am passionate about small business and my vision is to help other small businesses create sustainable business models that center around full-time employees that can make a living off their salary.

There are two ways to create employee retention and both are effective.
The first is fear. My roommate in college works for a large mortgage company. He was in town the other day and we were talking about his job and he mentioned that if you update your resume on Linkedin, you will immediately get a meeting with HR that ends with you getting fired. This is a fear based tactic, the goal is to not even allow you to find out what other employers are offering, instead you should just be happy with what we are giving you.
Sometimes the fear tactic is less obvious. In the Crossfit gym world, we usually use the “community” as a fear tactic saying things such as “you owe it to this group of people that trusts you or even you owe us for giving you a start and giving you this great job.”
The fear tactic exists for one simple reason. The business is insufficient in someway compared to the other job options. It usually means that the pay is below the market rate or they don’t offer benefits when the competitiors do. It can also mean the job is insufficient in other ways such as requiring extra unpaid work, bad work conditions, or even not having a vision for the business. Fear is used here because we are trying to get you to overlook certain aspects of the job.
The alternative is to use respect. Here is the kicker. Respect is a lot of work and it is expensive. I think we can boil respect down to some bullet points:
Full-time salary you can live on
Benefits
Getting to know the employee
Putting them in a situation where they can be successful
Working a reasonable hour load
Checking in on them and helping them emotional through tough times
Having a clear vision for the company and sharing it with them
Trusting them to make decisions and allowing them to make mistakes
The respect tactic is expensive and it is a lot of work but it leads to happy employees that are empowered to represent your company, your brand. While the fear tactic is cheaper and easier in the short term. The long term pain it creates will simply sink a business.
In the fitness world, the fear tactic is king. Most trainers and coaches are overworked and underpaid and with that comes significant turnover in the industry. Because of this, there are very few career jobs in the fitness industry — it has a turned into a freelance business where the only way to climb the ladder is to start your own business. I cannot think of a worse business setup then one where your successful employees have to eventually leave to make enough money to live.
Fear is the easy way to keep employees but at what cost.