The fitness giant's people lead reveals how trust, accountability and values hold a complex workforce together
When your workforce spans continents, disciplines and employment types – from salaried teammates to self-employed instructors with a deep emotional bond to the brand – maintaining cultural consistency is less a management exercise and more an art form.
For Les Mills, the Auckland-founded fitness company that has built a global empire on group training programs, that challenge falls squarely on the shoulders of its people function.
Faye Restall, chief people officer at Les Mills, says the company's talent model is built on harnessing the genuine passion that draws people to the brand in the first place – and then channelling that into performance.
"Our biggest risk is consistency at scale," Restall said. "We operate through our teammates, trainers, assessors, presenters, instructors and club partners. Ensuring that everything lines up with the Les Mills way and our values is essential."
The model is unusually layered. Les Mills presenters are, in Restall's words, "the celebrities in the fitness world" – and when they facilitate internally, they bring something hard to manufacture.
Sales teams in global markets are often group fitness instructors themselves, bringing authenticity to their roles. And instructors, though largely self-employed, carry a strong sense of identity tied to the Les Mills name.
"Our teammates are a mix of athletes or normal people with a love of fitness, so they have a great deal of pride working here," she explained. "We're able to maintain consistency at scale by utilising all the incredible skills we have available."
Where the model shines – and where it strains
Restall is candid about where purpose-driven talent models have their limits. The approach works well when conditions are right, but can fracture under pressure.
"It works brilliantly in fast‑moving, creative environments where people are motivated by purpose, growth, and ownership – which suits our business well," she said.
"It's most likely to break down under pressure, for example under rapid change, or, like any business, when performance conversations are delayed or avoided."
That last point is instructive. In many organisations, a culture of high trust can quietly become a culture of low accountability – where difficult conversations are deferred in the name of preserving relationships.
Les Mills has built in a structural counterweight: a clear values framework: BRAVE, UNITED, CHANGE THE WORLD.
"That's why we're disciplined about feedback, performance and the Les Mills values," Restall said.
For HR leaders managing hybrid or distributed workforces, the tension between flexibility and control is a daily reality. Les Mills resolves it through what Restall describes as clarity on outcomes, with flexibility on execution – a principle increasingly recognised as essential to retaining high-performing talent in today's workforce.
"We aim to be clear on the what and flexible on the how," said Restall. "When something goes wrong, the answer isn't to tighten control everywhere – it's to get sharper on accountability, capability, and, if we have to, consequences. High trust only works when standards are non‑negotiable."
Navigating a workforce that keeps evolving
One of the more nuanced observations Restall offered is about the pace of social change inside organisations – and how quickly unwritten rules can shift without anyone officially revising them.
"The workforce has changed a lot over the last 10 years and with evolution comes the need to 'check in' on social norms and the unwritten rules in a business," she said.
"Sometimes they've shifted on their own, and we need to pause and recognise that – and ensure what's shifted is still going to work for Les Mills in the future."
It is a quiet but important point for HR professionals navigating workforce transformation. Culture doesn't always change through formal programs. Sometimes it drifts – and the organisations that manage it best are the ones who notice early.
For Les Mills, that means staying close to feedback loops across a workforce that is global, cross-functional, matrixed and, by Restall's own admission, complex.
"We're always needing to take feedback, reset accountability, create clarity for our people and communicate, communicate, communicate," she added.
It is a deceptively simple prescription for a deceptively complicated challenge – and one that any HR executive leading a dispersed team will recognise immediately.
