At Swing Golf Lounge, we couldn’t offer the first-class indoor golf experience that we do without an amazing team. They are dedicated, trustworthy and a pleasure to work with. Our entire team has remained committed to our business since before the pandemic. A couple of them travel a long way to reach us for each shift. That they remain committed in this way speaks volumes about them as individuals, but we also think it says something about how we run our business. As owners, we never ask or expect our staff to do something that we aren’t prepared to do ourselves. Not least, our team member retention says something about our customers that they interact with every day. Without that being a pleasant experience, we have doubts if they’d still be with us; work is about more than money. We’re grateful to our customers that everyone can feel this way.
We’re only a small business, but we do our best to make sure our staff are well trained not only to serve our customers with a superior experience but also to ensure they are equipping themselves with the skills, training and experience to further their careers. It’s a two-way process. We meet enthusiasm and drive with the opportunity to learn. We offer our staff regular opportunities to learn online with courses on Udemy (https://www.udemy.com/). What they learn doesn’t need to be directly related to indoor golf or even golf at all. We encourage them to develop business skills using Microsoft software such as Excel and PowerPoint. Equally the courses could be about developing marketing knowledge or skills to project on social media platforms. Some may have a creative leaning, wishing to learn about graphic design or Photoshop-type packages. We always encourage learning about food and drink. Cocktail Sundays are always fun!
Almost every day entails some form of learning. Perhaps that’s something new about our TrackMan golf simulator technology, or our customer booking platform that we developed ourselves. Most recently, during the 2022 lockdown period, we brought in a trainer from Coast to Coast First Aid and Aquatics (https://www.c2cfirstaidaquatics.com/). Most of our team joined with us to earn the Canadian Red Cross’ top certification, Standard First Aid CPR/AED level C. It was an excellent team learning event and we all had fun doing it.
We’re rarely together as a complete team with everyone working different shifts. That being the case, we can’t wait to finally have our 2021 holiday party sometime soon in 2022. A few things got in the way before, and hopefully, limited COVID indoor dining obstacles won’t get in the way now.