Virgin Active

Virgin Active has been working with CoverMe since October 2022 to make the process of finding group exercise cover quicker and easier. 

The fully immersive group exercise-based club, in London’s trendy West Hampstead, offers more than 250 classes a week including Body Pump, HIIT, boxing, yoga and Spinning. Finding class cover is an ongoing exercise for general manager Tony Zimmerling. 

“We have 40 permanent instructors. Before using the CoverMe app, finding cover instructors would take hours of my time and was always in the back of my mind,” he says. 

In the past, Virgin Active’s instructors would post messages on their Facebook groups when they needed cover. Zimmerling would then receive an email from potential cover instructors, who he would research on social media before inviting them into the club to meet them and discuss how the classes work etc. The process was even more challenging for last minute cover. 

“If one of our instructors phoned in sick, it would be left to me to find cover. I’d have to scour Facebook groups and message all my different WhatsApp contacts to try and find someone. Everything else would have to be put on hold until I’d arranged cover. It was really stressful,” he explains. 

The CoverMe app has entirely transformed the process, allowing Zimmerling to source cover in minutes. “It’s so much easier now. Instructors just log into the app, post the dates they need covering with details of the class and rates of pay and the message goes out to all instructors within the chosen radius of the club. I see the job post, get notified when potential cover instructors respond and can accept or reject them,” he says. 

“I love how easy it is. I posted for cover for a yoga class this morning and had responses from two qualified instructors within 15 seconds. And looking at the app now I can see I have 26 confirmed covers and three posts awaiting a response for cover needed over the next four weeks.”

The app’s automatic invoicing function saves considerable time at month end too. Instructors scan a QR code to access the club when they come in to teach, which generates an invoice that is sent to management. 

“Instead of working through loads of documents on my PC, I just download a report from CoverMe, which details how many classes each instructor has taught and how much they are owed so I can process the payment. Payroll used to take a massive amount of time out of my day, but last month it only took two hours to process payments for 70 instructors, 30 of which were covers.” 

An additional benefit of the CoverMe app is that it has acted as a source of new group exercise talent, says Zimmerling. “We have found some amazing new instructors through the app, which we wouldn’t have discovered without using the app. 

“CoverMe is brilliant for us. Our permanent instructors love using it because it saves so much time. Many of them work in other clubs and still have to use the old way of finding cover. They love the fact they don’t have to do that here – it makes life so much easier for them and for management too.”