By Amanda Ensinger
Staff Writer
The Prairie Township Community Center will strive for excellence this year and recently enacted several changes to move these efforts forward.
At a recent meeting, the trustees approved legislation that allows the community center to offer specially priced memberships for Doctors Hospital patients.
“This new membership would last for a two month period and cost $40,” said James Gant, director of the community center. “We felt this would encourage patients to finish their rehab and is great way to partner with a local business.”
The center hopes that once they get patients in the door at the community center, they will be motivated to continue their membership at the normal rate once their two month period expires.
The board also approved creating a business membership and soliciting businesses to purchase memberships as part of their wellness plan.
“Businesses will get a discount off of adult memberships if they purchase memberships for 10 or more employees,” Gant said.
Businesses that purchase memberships for 10 to 19 employees would receive a 25 percent discount and businesses that purchase memberships for 20 or more employees will get a 35 percent discount.
The trustees also approved allowing the community center to spend $4,500 on a follow-up employee engagement survey.
“Last year’s survey was a baseline, so now the community center wants to have another one to see if some of the results have changed,” said Tracy Hatmaker, township administrator. “They enacted some changes as a result of the last survey, so they want to see if those changes have made a difference.”
A few of the issues that came up during the last survey included processes that could be more refined to help employees do their jobs, technology issues and communication issues.
“There were a lot of little changes that needed to be made,” Gant said. “Now that those changes have been made, we want to see how employees feel now.”
Hatmaker said these surveys are important because it will help the township retain employees at the center.
“Having to continually train new staff is time consuming and costly,” Hatmaker said. “These surveys help us better serve employees and retain them long term.”
Currently, the community center has 5,200 members. In 2016, their goals was to have between 4,500 and 5,000 members. Long term, the center hopes to have 6,000 members.
The center is 70 percent self sufficient. The trustees hope to increase that by 10 percent.
For more information on the community center, visit www.prairietownship.org.
