Virgin Active reviews

Lack of company operational support and structure at higher/middle management leads to poor communication, unfair performance models, unrealistic FTE departmental management structures. With significant head office staff turn over of staff the operational support at club level is never satisfied. Leading to constant change in focus and lack of understanding of priorities at club level. This leads to underperforming financial results at non invested or challenging clubs. There seems to be more interest in wasting money on poor development options, than caring for the existing body of staff at club level. No control over annual budgeting process, leads to a lack of buy in at club level by management and staff. This causing an increase in staff attrition. Poor human resource processes and timelines, leading to operational concerns with replacing staff, managing staff etc

Virgin Active is obsessed with “Activeness” (although ask a handful of our employees to explain what this means…not many will know) but has lost much of its “human-ness” over the years. We’re asked to apply the Golden Rule (“treat others the way you want to be treated”) but this doesn’t seem to work both ways and we’re often asked to go WAY above and beyond the call of duty to achieve our company goals…and this happens again and again. “Change is the only constant” is a fitting expression we use, though we regularly go full circle on what we believe to be important / no longer important. At Head Office in particular, roles are regularly being created and then being made redundant not long afterwards which makes following the strategy challenging! Despite the perks mentioned above, many people simply can't afford to survive on the salaries paid at most levels and would tell you they'd rather get a bigger slice of the pie!