How a scalable HR solution empowers a dynamic workforce at Barry’s

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Meet Barry's

At Barry’s—famous for the high-intensity interval training workout that takes place in its “Red Room” across 15 countries—maintaining a premium fitness experience isn’t just about the workout. It’s also about supporting the employees behind the scenes: instructors, studio teams, and HQ employees. To manage a complex workforce at 53 US locations and counting, Barry’s needed an HR and payroll platform that could adapt at speed, handle multi-entity requirements, and integrate a stack of tools all in one place.

Senior Director of Employee Relations & Benefits Vanessa Sarne shares how Barry’s chose Rippling to centralize everything from payroll to scheduling—and how it’s saving the People & Culture team time and unlocking new insights along the way.

How Barry's achieved faster onboarding, status changes, and offboarding

Previously, adding a single new hire to their HCM after extending an offer took around 15 minutes—someone on the Barry’s People & Culture team had to hop between systems to input all the employee’s data. Now, thanks to Rippling’s connected ATS and onboarding flows, “it’s about three to five minutes, depending on if they’re a dual role,” Vanessa said.

Offboarding is equally streamlined. Rather than manually sending emails, documents, and exit surveys, Barry’s now uses automated workflows that handle notifications and documentation as soon as a manager inputs a termination date.

With 50+ US locations under different EINs—and employees who regularly transfer between studios—Barry’s needed software that could handle complex entity changes without forcing “terminate-and-rehire” workarounds. “We have a high influx of status changes; for example, when people move locations or are promoted,” Vanessa explained. “We wanted a platform that was flexible enough to accommodate that.” In Rippling, all of Barry’s location and entity changes happen in one place, with no need to terminate and rehire. Now, Barry’s can keep its employee retention data rather than lose employees in the system every time they switch studios. The time to manage transfers has also gone from a 10–15 minute process to as little as three minutes.

“It's a massive time-saver,” Vanessa said.

How Barry's offers better support for its hourly workforce

Rippling offers a variety of tools that let studio staff handle everyday tasks—checking schedules, requesting time off, clocking in and out—in one place.

Barry’s rolled out Time & Attendance kiosks to all locations, which include face-scan and PIN features, further streamlining clock-ins. “We had mobile app clock-ins, which was good, but we’re pumped for the kiosk rollout,” Vanessa said. “It’ll make everything uniform across studios and give us even better oversight.”

The mobile app is intuitive and easy to use, and Vanessa notes that team members love how convenient it is to request time off, while managers praise the ability to approve timesheets—on the go. Previously, Barry’s used a separate scheduling app that required remembering an extra login, so consolidating those features in Rippling adds to the convenience.

With everything under one roof, managers now have better visibility when creating schedules, including a real-time view of employee data in the same place. Previously, if managers needed any employee information while building schedules, they’d have to go to a separate app to get it. Now, they can just click an employee’s profile within Rippling to access any information they need. Time-off requests also used to live in a separate system from the schedule, which meant that if time off was approved for an hourly employee, their manager needed to go into the scheduling app and make a note of it—a cumbersome process that created a lot of room for error.

How Barry's plans to scale with Rippling

Barry’s went live with Rippling in October 2024 and, according to Vanessa, the team is just getting started. With over 8 planned studio launches in 2025, strong implementation support and technical capacity to handle custom use cases, like unique pay guidelines, were clues that Rippling is a partner that can scale with the company as it pursues ambitious growth goals.

Some of the key ways Barry’s plans to grow with Rippling include:

• Scaling new studio launches: “One of our biggest goals in 2025 is opening more US locations,” Vanessa said. “Now we have a system that’s ready to handle that.”

• Eyeing international growth: Barry’s currently operates across  15 countries, with plans for more international growth alongside a new strategic investment partner. While the company currently only uses Rippling for its US locations, that could change. “We also wanted something that, in the future, could support our international expansion,” Vanessa said. “Rippling has the flexibility to do that.”

• Expanding to more Rippling modules: Barry’s started with core products like Payroll, T&A, Scheduling, and Benefits Administration, but they’re excited to use more features in 2025. “We are only in phase one,” Vanessa said. “Starting this quarter, we want to really dive into Performance Management, Headcount and Compensation Planning, Goals, and then also the advanced surveys.”

• Continuing to streamline compliance: With growth comes complexity—especially across multiple states and localities. Barry’s has already seen big improvements in administering PTO policies and offboarding. “It’s been huge for us in terms of compliance,” Vanessa said. “We can release new state supplement notices or handbooks in one click, and hundreds of employees can sign right in Rippling within a day.”

Looking ahead, Vanessa sees Rippling as a critical enabler for Barry’s next stage of growth—without adding more administrative burdens to the People & Culture team. 

“We still have more we want to do, but so far, everyone in P&C (People & Culture) loves Rippling,” she said. “When I reach out to them, everyone just speaks so highly of it.”