CASE STUDY
Fitness World standardised operations across 182 centres with Gluu
Running 182 fitness centres across Denmark and Poland means 182 chances for daily operations to diverge. Fitness World, Europe’s sixth-largest fitness chain, was growing fast — and without a single way of working, that growth produced inconsistency as much as scale.
Each centre managed tasks its own way. Good ideas from one location rarely reached the others. The same questions were being answered repeatedly — by phone, by email, from memory — at headquarters and regional level alike.
Fitness World’s response was the internal programme “Our processes.” Using Gluu, the team built a library of more than 500 processes covering all daily operations across 280 managers and 182 centres. The expectation: every manager searches for how to do things, uses what’s there, and improves it when they find a gap.
The results came quickly. In the first six months, 280 managers logged 19,000 sessions in Gluu. 70% of process changes submitted were judged genuine improvements. And informally, employees had invented a word for searching the platform: “Gluugling.”
“Gluu gives us the overview and detail to dive in and find practical improvement opportunities. One of the most visible results is in our employee onboarding.”
Rikke Nissen Sigdal
Business Development Director, Fitness World
Processes
500
+
Processes documented across all operations
User Sessions
19k
In Gluu in the first six months
From 280 managers across 182 centres
Real Improvements
70
%
Of submitted process changes were genuine improvements
Monthly Active
80
%
Of managers use Gluu at least once a month
The challenge of standardising 182 centres
Managing a large fitness chain is, in a meaningful way, a process standardisation challenge. Each location employs its own team, develops its own habits, and resolves problems in its own way. For a while, that's manageable. As the chain grows, it isn't.
At Fitness World, the gap between how work was supposed to happen and how it actually happened across 182 locations had real consequences. There was no reliable way for headquarters to push best practices out to the network. When a centre manager needed to know how to book an electrician or handle a routine maintenance task, the answer came through a call or an email — then the same call was made again from a different centre the following week.
“Since the Summer we have been working to establish a standardised way of working from the main office, via the regions and into the individual fitness centres,” explains Rikke Nissen Sigdal, Business Development Director at Fitness World. “The work is well underway. Now in 2018, we’re improving the processes continuously so that we can quickly eliminate waste and streamline the operation. Gluu gives us the overview and detail to dive in and find practical improvement opportunities.”
Building a shared process library across the chain
Fitness World's approach was to treat process documentation as an operational tool, not a compliance requirement. The internal programme — called “Our processes” — set out to standardise how work was done across every role and every centre, starting with the most common tasks and expanding from there.
Gluu became the platform for this. The team built a library of more than 500 processes, covering everything from ordering toilet paper to group finance. Every manager in every centre had access to the same library, with a clear expectation to search it, use it, and flag improvements when they found a gap.
The model works because it closes the loop on knowledge transfer. As Rikke Kannegaard, Operations Director at Fitness World, describes it: “Let’s say that they must put up new lighting in a centre. The centre manager then searches for ‘electrician’ in Gluu and finds the process of booking the craftsman and the local electrician who we work with. This saves time and ensures that the task is performed correctly the first time. Questions are added directly to the process in Gluu, which means that process owners answer each question only once. This eliminates a lot of emails and phone calls.”
Assigning clear standard operating procedure ownership to each process was what made this sustainable at scale. With 280 managers contributing feedback across 182 centres, each improvement suggestion reached the process owner directly — and a good idea from one centre could become the new standard for all of them.
“Internally people are now saying ‘just Gluugle it’”
Rikke Nissen Sigdal
Business Development Director, Fitness World
Fitness World found that standardisation and improvement aren't opposites when the platform makes it easy for the people closest to the work to flag what isn't working. If you want to see how that dynamic plays out in practice, Gluu's free trial gives you a direct look at the tools Fitness World uses every day.
Gluu free 30-day trial. No credit card required. Start from €24 / year.
Results: 19,000 sessions and a new verb
The numbers from the first six months were clear. Fitness World's 280 managers logged 19,000 sessions in Gluu — approximately 200 sessions per manager per year. 80% of them used Gluu at least once a month; 60% used it weekly or more. When 70% of all process changes submitted were assessed as genuine improvements, the engagement reflected real utility — not a top-down mandate.
The most telling indicator, however, was cultural. Employees had started saying “just Gluugle it” — using Gluu the same way they'd use a search engine to find out how to do something. That kind of informal adoption doesn't come from policy. It comes from a tool that actually helps people do their jobs.
“We see that process improvement happens almost by itself when we give the right tool to the employees who actually perform the work every day.”
Søren Pommer
Founder, Gluu
The most visible operational result was in employee onboarding. New staff could follow documented processes from day one, without relying on a colleague who happened to know the right way to do things. For a chain with ongoing hiring across 182 locations, that has direct operational value.
Systematic improvement at this scale also depends on having the right framework in place before you act. Fitness World's experience reflects what a well-structured 8-step process improvement plan looks like when applied consistently across a large distributed operation — the results compound over time.
In brief
Fitness World was growing across 182 fitness centres in Denmark and Poland but had no common way of working. Each centre resolved operational questions independently, which meant the same problems were answered repeatedly and good practices from one location rarely reached the others.
Fitness World needed a platform where every manager in the chain could find, use, and improve operational processes directly — not just a central documentation system. Gluu’s model of searchable, owned processes that staff can comment on matched the logic of the “Our processes” programme Fitness World was building.
The team built a library of more than 500 processes in Gluu, covering daily operations from ordering supplies to group finance. Managers across 182 centres search the platform when they need to complete a task and add questions directly to the relevant process when they hit a gap — meaning process owners answer each question once rather than fielding repeated calls and emails.
In the first six months, 280 managers logged 19,000 sessions in Gluu — around 200 per manager per year. 80% used the platform at least monthly, 60% weekly or more. 70% of submitted process changes were assessed as genuine improvements, and employee onboarding was identified as one of the most visibly improved areas.
Fitness World’s case suggests yes. The core challenge for any large chain — spreading consistent operational standards across many locations while keeping them improvable — is exactly what Gluu addresses. The combination of searchable processes, clear process ownership, and in-context staff feedback makes it practical for distributed operations with ongoing staff turnover.