With club greenkeepers still managing some of the winter tasks, such as woodland and pathway management, drainage work, re-turfing and turf aeration, Gauntlet is pointing club secretaries, and those designated as the ‘responsible person’ for golf club safety, in the direction of its risk assessment service and its suite of Gauntlet E-Learning Modules.
Gauntlet has been a health and safety game-changer for various golf clubs, including Ashridge Golf Club on the border of Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire and Feldon Valley in Oxfordshire. It provides expert audits of risks out on the course, in the greenkeepers’ workshops, as well as within the clubhouse’s social areas, bar, kitchen and offices.
Having specialists take the strain of the legal requirement of a risk assessment, whilst also ensuring this document is robust and without omissions, is a huge relief for the ‘responsible person’ in the eyes of the law. It is also invaluable for the safe day-to-day running of the club – an environment in which there is much potential for litigation.
By improving the risk-rating of a club, Gauntlet can also make a better case for the club at the time of its insurance renewal, helping to keep premiums as low as possible through careful and demonstrable management of the risk.
The Gauntlet E-learning modules assist this process, by taking anyone from golf club employees and volunteers, to contractors and casual staff, through some of the key areas relating to safety within their particular role, whether full or part-time.
Perfect Gauntlet E-learning courses for spring 2018 are: Hazardous Substances; Machinery Safety; Manual Handling and Working at Height. These offer pertinent guidance to those involved with the use of chemicals, fertilisers and pesticides on a course, tasks such as tree lopping and digging, use of tractors and utility vehicles and the handling of other tools and machinery for aspects such as bunker maintenance and course tidying.
Trainees can work through the interactive modules at a clubhouse desk, or at home, with each module recognising when they have successfully taken on board the learning advice. The use of video and animation enables learning messages to be firmly lodged in the brain and certificates are automatically generated as proof of training and content understanding.
Gauntlet’s Health and Safety Manager, Andrew Scott, says: “Late winter and early spring is a busy time of year for green keepers and maintenance staff who are out preparing the course for the main season. The tasks undertaken at this time of year carry a risk in themselves but also take place in a season of poor weather, when soggy ground and icy surfaces can bring their own health and safety challenges.
“We believe we have the perfect and affordable suite of services with our golf-club-specific management systems, as well as Gauntlet E-learning. Our risk assessments are not off-the-shelf templates, but bespoke, living documents that take into account all the unique risks applying to a particular course, clubhouse and full or part-time workforce. Armed with this document and the supporting training, a golf club can get into the swing of the new season knowing its policies are fully compliant with uncompromising health and safety law and that its operation won’t be handicapped by inadequate or non-existent training of staff, volunteers and other stakeholders.”
Gauntlet Golf Health & Safety www.golfclubhealthandsafety.com