“We must also hold ourselves to a higher level of accountability and responsibility since we work with children.” – Gymnastics Ontario, Partner of Uplifter Inc.
Covid-19 shutdowns have been disorienting for all of us. We’ve all faced major disruptions to our daily routines, sense of wellness, and our understanding of the future.
These changes can make it difficult to wrap our heads around how to reopen a business as some areas loosen regulations. That’s why we’ve created a simple guide outlining some of the most important things to consider when planning your club’s reopening. As club software providers, we’ve also detailed a host of time-saving tools that can help clubs safely resume operation.
(Learn how to use contact tracing, create new return to play policies, supplement with online virtual classes and more: skip to the bottom.)
Plan Your Return to Play with Three levels of Education
It will take time to educate yourself and your staff on the proper return to play guidelines and protocols for reopening your business. There are multiple sources of information you can turn to; however, these three sources are most important. Consider these as levels of protocol that build on top of one another.
Greater Community Guidelines & Protocols
First and foremost, be aware of the provincial, state, or national health and safety regulations for sport and recreation. These guidelines may be more sweeping and less specific but they will clearly establish a foundation for your sport’s governing body and local community protocols.
Sport Governing Body Guidelines & Protocols
Next, check with your sports community, specifically, your sport’s governing body. Your governing body will be able to distill return to play guidelines and protocols for your specific sport. They will likely also layer-on additional mandatory guidelines for operation.
Your governing body’s protocols will be vital for maintaining membership with that governing body, adhering to insurance, and ensuring your club does not fall below important industry practices for health and safety.
Facility & Field Guidelines & Protocols
Lastly, it will be important to check with your local community. If you rent space like an arena, facility or field, make yourself aware of any further protocols that apply to you. For example: seating areas, use of changing areas, and if indoors; entering and exiting the building, may all require specific protocols to ensure health and safety.
Create A Safe Environment at Your Club
In order to reopen, your club operations must come into compliance with all three levels of guidelines and protocols. As we said above, these levels will build atop one another but it’s still best to review and ensure you’re compliant with each level.
Cleanliness will be at the heart of your members’ concerns. Parents and athletes need to see extremely high levels of cleanliness in order to feel safe and confident in your club. At this juncture, going above-and-beyond to disinfect all training and common areas will be deeply appreciated by your membership.
This may mean that your staff performs frequent and thorough cleanings of your training and common areas. It may also mean setting up additional sanitation and/or washing stations and eliminating any equipment or training methods that are higher risk for transmission or simply too difficult to clean frequently (think foam pits in gymnastics).
Whatever processes your club puts in place, remember that at this point in time cleanliness is a vital business practice.
Review and Choose Tools for Easy Operations
Creating a safe environment that abides by all health and safety protocols is the most important thing you can do for your club. However, your members still need an easy club experience when returning to play.
Your club will be remembered for how welcoming, safe and easy your club experience is during these difficult times.
Covid-19 restrictions have created new complications, but choosing the right tools to navigate these restrictions can allow your members and coaches to thrive.
Consider how your club will handle things like missed classes due to mandatory isolation. If your registration doesn’t fill-up, is your club ready to leverage automated drop-in features to safely maximize your capacity?
See our detailed list of relevant questions and learn how your club can tackle each challenge with simple feature implementations below.
Communicate Frequently to Build Trust
You don’t have to wait until your club is 100% ready to reopen before communicating with your members. Begin communicating with your membership as soon as you’re comfortable.
Sending early communications will give your members time to prepare for enrollment. Or, at the very least, early communication will help give hesitant members more time to consider returning to training.
Early communication can also help you rebuild the bond you have with your athletes and their parents.
By outlining your intentions, and providing updates on what your club is doing to prepare for reopening, your membership can get a clear picture of the steps you’re taking to create a safe and efficient training environment.
This communication also opens a two-way channel to create a smoother return to play. If parents have questions or suggestions, they’ll be much more likely to reach-out if they see your club is back at work.
Lastly, as part of return to play communications, be sure to tell parents and athletes exactly what they can do to keep themselves safe. Specifically, tell them things like how to enter your building, where to find washing and sanitation stations, and if, or how, parents can safely watch their athletes train.
Club Management Features to Help Your Club Return to Play
Do you need to limit physical transactions between administrators and parents? What is your plan for handling any missed classes that may occur from mandatory isolation? If your club doesn’t fill up on registrations right away, will you use new drop-in features to maximize your revenue while staying within strict capacity limits? Get answers to these questions and learn how to create a smooth club experience for your members with the resources below:
How do we create a new policy or agreement?
Do you need to require that all participants agree to stay home and isolate if they, or someone in their family, experiences Covid-19 symptoms in the last 14 days? Learn how to create a new policy here. For specific COVID-19 policy structure examples click here.
How do we adjust class sizes?
Physical distancing protocols will very likely impact your club’s capacity. Learn how to adjust class sizes here.
How do we adjust class pricing?
If your club is temporarily removing some training apparatus, you may need to adjust class prices to reflect that. Learn how to adjust class prices here, including setting automated proration for athletes that join later in a season.
How do we remove or adjust administrative permissions for staff on furlough?
With some staff on furlough, it may make sense to temporarily limit their administrative capabilities. Learn how to remove or adjust admin permissions here.
How do we offer online training courses to help supplement our return to play programs?
Supplement your offerings by linking your online training classes to your programs. Learn how to link online classes and set reminders for participants here.
How do we safely maximize our capacity with drop-ins?
Uplifter’s fully automated drop-in feature ensures your club can maximize capacity while adhering to strict health and safety restrictions for class sizes. Learn more about our automated drop-in management here.
How do we setup online payments so we can reduce our physical transactions?
Reducing the amount of customer contact is key to preventing the spread of covid-19 and building trust with your members. Learn how to offer online payments here.
How do we reduce physical contact between coaches and administrators?
The more administrative tasks you can take online, the better. Consider implementing digital attendance and digital evaluations so coaches can complete these tasks on their phones or tablets. This eliminates unnecessary close contact between coaches and administrators. Learn about digital attendance and digital evaluations here.
How do we prevent new members from registering for specific programs?
In some regions, only returning competitive athletes may restart their training during certain phases of re-openings. Under these restrictions, clubs cannot currently accept new members. Clubs with these restrictions may choose to set program registration restrictions to prevent new member registrations and avoid the process of refunding. Learn how to set requirements or pre-requisites for specific programs here.
Can we target our email communications to only those who are allowed to return to training?
Yes. If you have a set group of athletes who are returning to training, you can quickly target those athletes with email updates. These updates can also include policy attachments or image attachments that show your specific social distancing plans at your facility. Learn how to target specific programs and classes with Uplifter’s targeted email tool.
If you have questions about any of these features, please contact us.
For more information, stay up to date with our latest tools and features. Signup for our Learn.Uplifter Newsletter and Like us on Facebook so you can tune into our weekly 20-minute Feature Friday webinars.
Return to Play Guidelines from Uplifter’s Partner Organizations
Below is a quick list of links for some of Uplifter’s partner associations. This link list will continue to be updated as more information becomes available.
Skate Canada Return to Skating Guidelines
Gymnastics Ontario Opening Framework
BC’s Restart Plan and Gymnastics BC’s Return To Play
Gymnastics BC’s Re-Opening The Sports Industry
Gymnastics Newfoundland and Labrador COVID-19 Updates (scroll down on homepage)
