Planet Fitness entered the South African health club industry in 1995, founded by Manny Rivera, an American who married a South African citizen. Rivera saw how the industry worked in his adopted home — and how it didn’t work — and believed he could outperform his well-established competition.
As Planet Fitness grew, paper forms and documents piled up. It became difficult to track data and virtually impossible to keep it in one centralized, secure location.
That’s when the company started using Jotform. Now Planet Fitness owns more than 1,000 online forms and 3,000-plus Jotform workflows. According to human resources director Ryno Strydom, the company uses Jotform in nearly every department.
Strydom didn’t have to increase HR staff even as Planet Fitness doubled in size. Jotform automation provided a way to get more done.
It’s a standard protocol now in the business: If we want to launch something quickly and effectively, we say, ‘Let’s make it with Jotform,’
Ryno Strydom
Life before Jotform
Planet Fitness started using Jotform in 2017. Before going digital, Strydom says workflows were patched together, and his department spent a lot of time printing paper documents. For example, Planet Fitness used to distribute a 70-page employee packet for new hires. After implementing a new-hire workflow with Jotform, that massive stack of paper is no longer needed.
“We were very much just paper — paper and email,” Strydom says. “Either you email me, you phone me, or you put it on a spreadsheet and forward it to me. We had paper sign-in registers and physical books. We had very little digitization anywhere.”
As if inefficient workflows and physical paperwork weren’t bad enough, Strydom had concerns about data loss. There was also general confusion regarding how data was collected and used. Plus, with loose paperwork throughout the office, data security was a concern.
“There was no way to understand what you were doing or what was actually happening,” Strydom says. “There were printing costs and things like that. But the biggest challenge was the loss of data.”
Now Planet Fitness uses every automation tool Jotform has, with monthly submission counts that regularly reach five figures. Many of those submissions are part of approval flows created with Jotform Workflows.
“We use Jotform across the business. It gives us ease of access to our own data,” says Strydom. “Through different workflows, we can control what’s happening, when it is happening, see if it’s happening, and just keep an eye on all of our different processes.”
3,000-plus Jotform workflows lead to 30-percent efficiency boost
Planet Fitness has literally built thousands of workflows with Jotform. These flows facilitate movement of company assets (like workout equipment), a variety of essential HR tasks, and more. According to Strydom, Jotform workflows are used company wide. One of his newest automations guides Planet Fitness’s hiring process from recruitment to onboarding.
The application “starts from a video and personality assessment on Jotform. That goes to the club to approve. Then it goes to the regional manager for approval. If [the candidate is] applying for a managerial post, it goes through the national office.
“After that, [the application] goes into a training workflow — tests, giving [the candidate] materials, seeing [their] competency levels. After those approvals, it goes to the HR team to double check the salary and that everything is in order. After that it goes into our onboarding flow. That generates a payroll file for us, which goes into a payroll system.
“Basically,” Strydom says, “it takes you from wanting to work for us until you walk into our front door — in one flow.”
The Jotform Workflows assign feature with conditional logic helps Strydom create dynamic and efficient automation. Planet Fitness can create workflows that assign different approvers based on conditions within the flow.
When applicants choose the club they’d like to work at, the workflow is automatically directed to the corresponding club manager and club region, as well as the appropriate human resources staff member.
In one flow, we’ve got five or six forms that get sent on cue based on the need. That’s a feature that changed a lot of how we operate. The conditional logic side of Jotform is ridiculously powerful.
Planet Fitness also takes advantage of the Jotform Workflows escalation feature. If an approver fails to act within a specified time frame, the task is escalated to another approver.
“I can escalate the approval if a manager is not dealing with it. Or I can say, ‘In seven days, send the next form,’ ” Strydom says. “We’ve got quite a few of those.”
Jotform workflows — both simple and more advanced — have led to an improvement in efficiency across the board at Planet Fitness. Completing monthly payroll has become easier. This notorious burden now takes roughly half the time to complete.
“Payroll used to take 10-plus days of solid work. Now it’s five to six days total,” Strydom says. “Efficiency in terms of getting the approvals without having to drive, phone, set up other appointments…. From an HR perspective, it’s a good 30 percent improvement in efficiency minimum, if not more.”
We use every feature you have
Planet Fitness didn’t stop at Workflows when it started to automate with Jotform. Strydom integrated Jotform Sign with selected flows, including one that serves as a final review of binding membership contracts.
“We use the Jotform Sign feature so we have a legal signature. That also goes into an approval flow to double check before we sign them up or decline them.”
Planet Fitness uses Jotform Apps as well. Strydom created an app for managers at Planet Fitness, consolidating more than 50 forms into one mobile app for access to workflows on the go.
Strydom says that Jotform Apps is powerful enough to impress Planet Fitness’s IT department.
“I spoke to one of our IT guys and he said, ‘Do you realize how rare it is to find a solution that you can just press a button and get an app?’ It just works. You don’t have to do anything else.”
Planet Fitness uses the Jotform PDF Editor to automatically generate employment contracts as well as contracts for members. Additionally, the Planet Fitness call center uses Jotform for quality assurance. And its group exercise program uses Jotform to rate instructors, track member satisfaction, and field questions on upcoming classes.
“We use every feature you have,” Strydom says of Jotform.
Getting more done with Jotform
Planet Fitness entered the health club market in South Africa as an underdog with a grand vision. As Rivera built his business empire one club at a time, the company remained focused on his original motivation — outperforming well-established clubs. Now, Planet Fitness is a major player in its own right, becoming the second largest health club chain in South Africa.
With Jotform in place, Strydom’s HR team could handle the extra workload that resulted from Planet Fitness’s success.
“We’ve doubled in size as a company, but I haven’t had to double or even increase my operating team. We can do a lot more now than we could two years ago.
I don’t think there’s been an area where Jotform hasn’t impacted efficiency. As a business, that’s how we operate. We’re not going to do something unless it makes us more efficient.
Moving from unwieldy stacks of paper to thousands of high-performing digital workflows, Planet Fitness can get more done than ever before. That makes it easier for the organization to focus on the well-being of its clients — and to continue meeting its goal of being a cut above.
We’d love to hear the creative ways you use Jotform to help your organization succeed. Let us know in the comments below, and fill out this form if you’re interested in being featured in a future Jotform case study.
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