Cult-like and toxic company to work for. For a high end club that is supposed to be at the top of the food chain, they hire and promote the most incompetent management in the fitness industry from low level managers to upper. Upper management is extremely disconnected from what is general business protocol, and they appear to be very disconnected from their clubs. There is always the threat they will come visit but very rarely do visit these clubs. There is no work life balance if you expect to be a top earner. 35-40 hours training here is the equivalent of working 80-100 hours at a desk job. If you don't have a family, a home and hobbies outside the gym, then being at the gym round the clock should not be a problem for you. You will be eating, breathing Life Time and it's products. Even if you have many certifications, you are required to certify in Life Time Training's certification, do their two week cohorts and that is just to sign on as an employee. If you specialize in whatever other specialty programs they offer, you will be sitting for weeks on calls and forced to watching their videos for hours, videos that do not run properly, often crap out, and are incredibly boring. Nothing worse than forcing someone that is active and promoting activity to sit for hours on end. I did not find anything that they were teaching to be ground breaking either. Personal trainer run training programs and Group Fitness classes are just a rip off of other popular fitness trends that they slap a new name on. Leadership props up those who are not producers, are non-existent for those who are. Those who don't work hard sit around and gossip about those that do. Group fitness can come and go, have other day jobs, but they are treated like celebrity trainers, while the personal training department and membership are working like dogs. We get clientele to pay a mortgage or car payment in personal training every month for years and then ignored. LT force personal trainers to clean down all of their dusty, dirty equipment on a daily basis. Breathing in plastics off of their new equipment. At the new clubs openings you will be unboxing all of their equipment, breaking down boxes, and they have you do it under the guise that it is team building. Seen for what it really is, this was probably someone's genius idea at corporate and is saving them a good 50k or more in expense. Good for them bad for the employees that have to do it. Their new club opening had many TM's in tears, it was more like a bootcamp and some of the trainers confided that they didn't know if they could take another day of it, were ready to quit. Recent push is for more equity and diversity. It is all phony. You are better off working for a company that has actually been equitable and diverse for many decades and isn't doing it because it is the latest trend. That knows how to handle and communicate with their employees. A company that actually brings services to diverse populations not just to rich in wealthy neighborhoods. HR is useless and many HR issues. They don't follow-up and those that do are defensive and dismissive. As another reviewer states they sweep everything under the rug. I witnessed in meetings a lot of touching and handsy guys on one of the females, happened in many meetings while management could clearly see but did nothing. It continued to happen. I could care less what people do on their own time but it was just gross. We are forced to be in these meeting, be creepy on your own time. At one of their newer locations they are hiring mostly men and clearly the hiring manager has a problem with females and is only hiring a certain demographic, although they state they are an equal opportunity employer. If you speak up they criticize, if you don't speak up they criticize. As a strong female in fitness you are expected to be a compliant mouse at this company and assertiveness is frowned upon and treated as aggressive. Anytime I would go in to speak with my manager, which was very rare and generally just general business issues, he seemed terrified to talk to me. How does someone like this talk to the general public and not only that get promoted? He was the upgrade while predecessor was fired. There was theft at our location, multiple times. Not just theft in the locker room but theft of equipment and employees stealing from other employees. Management giving a lot of chances to those employees. If that wasn't bad enough there was a major crime in our area and a couple of the trainers were investigated. Managers and employees openly make fun of employees and clientele. Although there are different departments in meetings I believe most don't know what the other does, I would always be trying to connect members to their departments but when it came down to it they were extremely disrespectful and not friendly. I never experience this at other gyms I worked at but it is a testament of this culture. I am glad to be out of this company.
