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- Life Time
- Success story
Keeping every team member in the loop, from the pool deck to the weight room
See how the athletic club pioneer streamlines internal communication and elevates the frontline employee experience
at 180+ locations using a mobile-first platform for deskless teams.
Key results
Replaced Microsoft Yammer with a
mobile communication platform built
for deskless team
Connected workers across 180+ clubs
with real-time updates and targeted
messagin
Simplified club operations by digitizing
daily checklists and task assignments
The premier athletic club needed a better way to reach its always-on-the-move frontline staff with important updates. Using Beekeeper, employees across 180+ clubs can now stay informed, complete daily tasks, and connect with their teams — all from a single mobile app.
Beekeeper’s not just another tool — it’s a way for our clubs to get the information they need, save time, and focus on serving members.”
Laura Kennedy
Director of Team Member Communications, Life Time
Beekeeper has changed the way we think about internal communications. It’s taken us from a tactical team to true strategic partners.
Laura Kennedy
Director of Team Member Communications, Life Time
Walk into any Life Time athletic club and you’ll see frontline teams in action. They’re checking in members, coaching classes, lifeguarding at the pool, and serving guests in the café. These employees are the face of the brand, keeping daily operations running across more than 180 clubs.
But with most of Life Time’s 42,000 employees working on the floor — and 60% of them without company email — critical information didn’t always reach the right people. From safety protocols to club policies, important updates often got lost in the shuffle.
Life Time used Microsoft Yammer to stay connected internally, but the tool soon became unmanageable. “Yammer was the Wild West of communication,” says Laura Kennedy, Director of Team Member Communications at Life Time. “Everybody who wanted a group or a channel created one, and it was very difficult to find anything timely or relevant.”
Messages couldn’t be filtered by role or location, so employees were overwhelmed with updates that didn’t apply to them — and often missed the ones that did. “Our time-poor team members couldn’t spend an extra half hour or 45 minutes trying to find the information they needed to do their jobs,” says Kennedy. “They would just find other ways to do it outside of our designated tools.”
Yammer also wasn’t flexible enough for Life Time’s club-by-club needs. “Each of our locations is unique — the employee base, the members we serve, the communities we’re in,” explains Kennedy. “We needed a communication platform we could scale, but also tailor to each club.”
Club managers — called lead generals — felt the strain too. “A lead general is like the mayor of their individual club. They’re expected to run a business and stay connected to 10-plus departments, all while leading from the floor,” says Kennedy. “Since club leaders are rarely behind a desk, desk-based communication tools weren’t practical for delivering the resources they needed to educate and coach their teams.”
Without a mobile-first platform designed for the frontline, communication was inconsistent and hard to act on. “We needed a tool that wasn’t email-based to reach our non-desk workers,” says Kennedy. “And with team members ranging from 15 to 80 years old — with different roles and tech comfort levels — it had to be simple.”
Yammer was the Wild West of communication. Anybody could start a group or a stream, and it was very difficult to find anything timely or relevant.”
Laura Kennedy
Director of Team Member Communications, Life Time
In 2018, Life Time launched Beekeeper to better meet the needs of its frontline. After a successful pilot with the swim and group fitness departments — two teams that had been heavy users of Yammer — the rollout expanded to all 30 markets.
“We really focused on showing local leaders what was in it for them,” says Kennedy. “Beekeeper’s not just another tool — it’s a way for our clubs to get the information they need, save time, and focus on serving members.”
Beekeeper quickly became the company’s primary communication tool for frontline teams. Each club has its own stream, allowing local leaders to post operational updates, recognize great work, and align teams across departments. Kennedy can also easily share corporate initiatives — like promotional campaigns or policy changes — while tailoring messages to relevant teams.
One of the most impactful features has been chat campaigns, which enable the team to send direct messages to employees and track confirmed reads through built-in receipt acknowledgment. “Our CEO always asks, ‘How do we know that our team members know what they need to know?’” says Kennedy. “With chat campaigns, we can confidently answer that. We can see open rates, follow up directly in their inbox, and make sure the message got through.”
As adoption grew, Beekeeper started playing a bigger role in operations. Life Time now uses it to digitize daily forms, including the twice-a-day walkthroughs completed by club leaders. It’s also used to assign tasks to facility operations teams responsible for cleaning locker rooms and maintaining equipment.
Known internally as LT Grid, Beekeeper has become the single point of access for all workforce tools and information. It gives frontline workers quick access to Workday, the LMS, and LP Central — Life Time’s internal library for policies, SOPs, and benefit documents — through shortcut links on the homepage.
“Beekeeper is the one-stop shop for everything our frontline needs,” says Kennedy. “And with multifactor authentication through PingID, employees can log in once and access what they need without having to authenticate every time.”
Looking ahead, Life Time plans to deepen its integration with frontline tools even further, using pre-built connectors from the Beekeeper Marketplace. “We’re currently working toward connecting Beekeeper with tools like Workday and ServiceNow,” says Kennedy. “The more we can bring into one place, the smoother the experience is for our team members.”
Inside Life Time’s frontline playbook
From compliance and culture to executive buy-in and a seamless rollout, this story shows how to get frontline transformation right.
About Life Time
Headquartered in Minnesota, Life Time operates more than 180 athletic country clubs across the U.S. and Canada. With fitness, wellness, and lifestyle offerings under one roof — from yoga studios and pools to cafés and kids’ programs — Life Time helps people of all ages live healthier, more connected lives.
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