Efficient spring training

Training new employees can be a year-round task and finding the time while also preparing the course for early-season play can be exhausting. However, not training employees properly can be costly in more ways than one. It’s essential to find an efficient and effective way to ensure your entire crew is fully prepared for the busy season ahead.

First steps

Typically, the first step in the hiring process involves a lot of HR information and paperwork. Once the employee is prepared on the technical side of things, it’s time to get into the dirty work.

“I think it’s pretty popular in our industry to start new employees on simpler tasks that don’t involve as much equipment operation, but probably involves more manual labor,” says Brian Green, director of golf course maintenance at Lonnie Poole Golf Course in Raleigh, North Carolina.

The pandemic and labor shortage had forced some courses and superintendents to accelerate the training process.

“When you’re short-staffed, you’re trying to find the most efficient ways to do tasks,” Green says. “Sometimes you have to put up with tasks not getting done to the best of someone’s ability because they had more tasks to get done than normal.”

Now, Green has begun refining the details of his training program.

“We’ve really started focusing more on fine-tuning the way that we do things, trying to get back to the most ideal way to do things that’s going to provide the best product,” he says. “That’s something we’ve kind of shifted gears on and focused more on in the last year.”

Managers or veteran employees responsible for training co-workers are tasked with instilling best practices into new hires. The practice can become muddled or inefficient — and fail to develop well-rounded employees — if those responsibilities fall onto just the superintendent.

“For us, it was important to develop a core group, and then use those people to retrain because it takes everybody,” says Bob Davis, COO and director of golf course operations at Chartiers Country Club in Pittsburgh. “The superintendent can’t be solely responsible for training every single person on his staff, so there have to be levels where things are delegated.”

Use your resources

Utilizing veteran employees as trainers and mentors is the ideal way to delegate the responsibility of training. It also allows new employees to bond with staff.

“I think the new employees might be a little more comfortable being trained by someone who they can kind of look at as a peer,” Green says. “They might not be as intimidated as they would be in front of a supervisor.”

Having veteran employees take an active role in the training process is beneficial on both ends. Veterans get more experience training and take on more responsibility and leadership roles. For turfgrass students working on courses, this provides an active learning opportunity.

“It gives them the opportunity to learn how to be a trainer, which is part of what they can learn here as far as real-world stuff to supplement their classroom learning,” says Don Garrett, superintendent of The Walker Course at Clemson University. “A lot of our turfgrass management students that work for us, they’re going to be assistant superintendents when they get out of here and they need to learn how to train people and be thorough.”

Speaking of being thorough, when training new employees, there are multiple ways you can approach it. It’s all about adapting and knowing what’s best for the person being trained.

“I don’t think there’s a cookie-cutter recipe to training somebody,” Davis says. “Everybody’s different. Someone might be physically stronger and be able to lift their machine onto a trailer safely, but someone else might not be able to do that. You have to have realistic expectations on what each person can and cannot do.”

Once you establish an employee’s skill set, you can begin working to enhance those skills and improve on other aspects of training.

“Certainly, hands-on training and demonstrating things is the most effective way to train someone,” Green says. “Someone can read something on a piece of paper and not grasp it. There’s going to be certain situations that you can show them out in the field that you can’t demonstrate otherwise.”

In addition to being thorough, patience helps the trainer execute his or her duties. Whether you were a new employee 20 years ago or 20 weeks ago, you can likely remember making a mistake or two. Remember to give the trainee some slack.

“Not everybody’s going to learn the same, not everybody’s going to kick it off as quickly as somebody else,” says Peter Rappoccio, superintendent at Concord Country Club in Concord, Massachusetts. “You need to be patient and kind of find what works and how to communicate with somebody. That’s the big piece.”

Training tactics and practices have changed throughout the years.

“I think the old term ‘initiation by fire,’ throwing them in there, isn’t always the right thing,” Davis says. “Taking baby steps, in my opinion, is the best method and not just throwing people into situations. You don’t want to set somebody up for failure.”

Taking the necessary time upfront to build a new employee’s confidence and bandwidth will only benefit your course and team in the long run. This comes from being detail-oriented and setting expectations.

“Having a training program where you have everything kind of spelled out and you take the time to show someone how to do something properly … there’s no pushback if equipment comes in and is broken or banged up,” Rappoccio says. “You kind of eliminate that, so it helps protect your equipment and, more importantly, keeps the individual operating it safely.”

Safety

As a course employee, you’re around and operating perhaps millions of dollars of equipment and materials daily. Ensuring they are used properly and safely from the start will potentially save you from financial damage as well as injury.

“I think safety has to be No. 1 with what we’re doing on a daily basis,” Davis says. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, we can go out there and make a mistake and kill a lot of turf, because we can grow grass again.’ If somebody were to get hurt, those things would be harder to live with if we could’ve prevented it.”

By setting the precedent that safety comes first, you establish an example for the employees and potentially save money and lives. For Garrett, machines like the woodchipper are taken very seriously. In addition to watching a safety video from the manufacturer, new trainees must also go out with an experienced employee until they are trusted to operate it alone.

“I don’t care if a guy came in here and applied for a job and had 20 years’ experience with a tree company and ran a chipper all his life, he’s still gonna watch that video,” Garrett says. “Don’t make exceptions, because once you make exceptions, you’ll have an accident.”

To the trainee

The role of trainee is just as important and the trainer role. Trainees are essentially students of the course for a while. Just like in the classroom, it’s OK for them to ask questions and be nervous. Encourage trainees to be curious and strive to learn new things.

“A lot of times when you’re a new employee, or learning a new task, you don’t want to feel like you’re not intelligent and you are hesitant to ask questions,” Green says. “I would encourage new employees to not be intimidated to ask questions. I think that if you are not intimidated, it kind of shows initiative and shows your eagerness to your supervisor and trainer and they’ll be more apt to introduce you to more things if they see you have an interest.”

Everyone working on a golf course was a new employee at one time. It’s the responsibility of the trainee as much as the trainer to ensure the future of the course is in good hands.

“When it comes to training, essentially you’re building a team,” Davis says. “There’s a lot of things that go into that. There’s culture behind what you’re trying to do.

“We’ve invested a lot in projects on the golf course, but you have to invest in your people as well. That’s all very important when you’re trying to get to your end goal of putting out the best product that you can on a daily basis.”

Cassidy Gladieux is a Northeast Ohio-based writer and frequent Golf Course Industry contributor.