Most golf course superintendents feel more comfortable out on the course handling the agronomics than stuck in the office handling budgets, staff reviews, inventories, training classes and planning capital projects. This leads to what I call the fall season catch up and review. Fall is the perfect time to review and catch up to date on all of your office work and documentation your operation has generated over the course of the year.
Here is a list of a few items with strategies to get the results you need while keeping the office time to a minimum.
• Review all pesticide records, fuel records and material data sheets. Check for legibility, accuracy and accessibility. If you were inspected today, would you pass, can you afford not to?
• Review year-to-date results and year-end projections on all financials and assigned benchmarks. Be sure all items are coded properly and critique any variances within the proper format. An example of an assigned bench mark would be a percentage of spend with contracted vendors or an assigned contingency to reduce overtime by 5 percent year over year.
• Staff reviews are important motivators and present a major opportunity to build a strong team. If you are behind catch up, chronologically but do not sacrifice quality to save time. Handle the paperwork, conduct a one on one meeting with the staff member and try to include at least one personal development goal such as earn pesticide license or attend an industry training class.
• Planning for the future is an important part of the superintendent’s job. Take time to update critical planning documents such as next year’s budget, short range capital projects, long range capital projects and any lease programs existing or proposed.
• Fall is the perfect time to conduct staff training. You just finished a tough Summer golf season and while the events are still fresh on your mind plan several training meetings to address the needs of your operation. Topics include: Safety (do you have written safety instructions for your primary job tasks?), Right to Know, Language Skills (English, Spanish or others), Equipment Operation, Employee Handbook with policy reviews and never forget to invest in life skills training such as First Aid and CPR. Invest in your people and they will take care of your property.
Fall is a good time to reflect and see just where you are as a superintendent. If you take a little time now to be sure all of your T’s are crossed and your I’s are dotted you will be able to make the best decisions possible as you move your course, your staff and ultimately your career forward.
Golf writer Anthony L. Williams, CGCS, is a frequent GCI contributor.