As many managers are very busy at this time of year with membership renewals and new committees, we would like to reach out to you with some news, information and notice of upcoming events. The monthly newsletter is something that will continue to grow and if you have any feedback or suggestions for IGCMA, please reach out.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
Your annual subscription to the Association is now due. You should have received your invoice and if you haven't paid it already, please do so at your earliest convenience.
Only fully paid up members will be able to attend our AGM in March.
AGM
The 2021 AGM will take place on March 7th at Powerscourt GC at 5.00 pm. It will be preceded by Golf - Tee from 11.00-12.00.
The booking time sheet for the AGM opens tomorrow Friday 25th at 9.30am, on BRS via the members section of the IGCMA website. Those not registered to access this area will need to do so before booking.
The cost for the day, including Breakfast Roll, Golf, Prizes and Dinner is €60. Dinner only is €35. Please let me know if you are intending to dine, but not play golf.
Attached please find Notice of the AGM & Agenda, Minutes of the 2020 AGM plus the audited accounts.
Golf Genius will be facilitating the Golf Event Management on the day.
Click here for AGM Golf Booking
MONTHLY ZOOM MEETINGS
We will continue with our ZOOM Sessions which will take place on the first Thursday of each month at 11.00am.
Save the date: Next Meeting March 3rd with Zoom Link to Follow
EDUCATION
Budgeting & Reforecasting with John Crawley
Thursday March 10th 14:00 - 16:00
zoom link to follow
· Budgeting and reforecasting
- Importance of Strategy and Goals being set first
- Regular reforecasting of expected Budget outturn
- Rolling down Budgets to managers
- Creating what-if scenarios to test its resilience
- Validating the key inputs to a Budget
- Building an Budget two ways – Top down and Bottom up
- Budgets as the Finance subset of an annual Club plan
RECRUITMENT
Congratulations to Jim Cullen who has returned to club management as General Manager of Scrabo GC earlier this month.
Current Golf Club in their requirement process;
Athenry GC, Holywood GC, Lucan GC, Rosslare GC, Seapoint GC, Spa GC and Wicklow GC.
Also to note: Jeff Fallon at Royal Dublin GC is seeking a Finance Officer. Details - https://www.theroyaldublingolfclub.com/news/news-article/job-advertisement-finance-manager
Click Here - Current Vacancies
MATCHES /GOLF EVENTS
If you are interested in playing some IGCMA International Golf in 2022, please see the schedule above and details to register interest:
Reply by Email to michael.igcma@gmail.com or send form back to me at IGCMA c/o Riverdale, Herbert Road, Bray, Co.Wicklow A98P2C1
INDUSTRY NEWS
Return to the Office: Will it Last?
Experienced Employment and HR adviser David Bell, Contributor on Down to Business, Lunchtime Live (Newstalk) Last Word (Today FM).
Once again we find ourselves returning to the workplace after another period of working from home. Whilst this time round seems more finalised than previously, it’s never been more important to manage a return effectively, both for your colleagues’ health and well-being, as well as your business performance.
Let’s take a look at some of the lessons learnt after previous lockdowns and top tips for the great workplace return.
We are all experiencing a little déjà vu… will this return to the office become the norm again? Since March 2020, businesses have waited with bated breadth for restrictions to ease, for staff to return to some form of an office routine, only to find themselves back to working from home a few short months after.
As the latest variant of Covid-19 begins to ease, we find ourselves once again beginning to consider a return to the office, possibly the ‘Great Return’. But what have we learnt from our previous workplace returns when it comes to employee wellbeing, office environments, and rejuvenating workplace relationships both offline and online? Here’s some of our top tips for managing your workspace in 2022 as we begin yet another (and hopefully the last!) workplace return.
Top Tips: Workplace Management in 2022
1. Be Considerate to All
When it comes to returning to the office, it’s important to understand that such a move can bring a host of opinions across your staff. Whilst some colleagues will enjoy returning to the office, cultivating relationships in-person and having a commute and routine, others will fear a return to the office. They may be anxious about the health and well-being of their families if they return to a busy office in the
midst of Covid, while others prefer to have their own personal workspaces where they can control the heat, the air and the comfort of their environments.
Be considerate to all staff - provide appropriate notice if you wish certain colleagues to return to the office. Consider if it is possible to continue flexible working from home procedures, and if this can’t happen, provide good communications with staff affected.
2. Enhance Your Workspaces
Many of your colleagues have grown accustomed to their own personal workspaces, where they’ve been able to control the heating, what music they listen to and when they want to have a quick 5 minute coffee.
In previous post-Lockdown returns, we’ve saw sometimes forced workplace returns where colleagues have found themselves irritated by the usual office environments that can be disruptive, where they have resented their outdated workspaces and wishing to be back at home in their own environments.
As we make a return, consider how you could further enhance your workspaces. Whether you are a large or small business, making some small enhancements can make the difference for your staff. Check out your heating in the office - can your colleagues control it? What about the workplace ambience - is it calming or too disruptive? Consider asking colleagues if they would like to use a radio or headphones to help them focus. And what about that all important morning coffee - can your colleagues have the option of using a modern coffee machine?
Whatever the enhancement, taking these previous lessons learnt with office returns will ensure that your colleagues feel satisfied with their workspaces in the ‘new norm’.
3. Focus on Relationships
It’s been nearly two years of off-on working from home and from the office. And this has undoubtedly had an impact on workplace relationships and your colleagues’ capacity to form rapport with each other.
We’ve grown so accustomed to off-line comms - are your colleagues prepared to off-line relationships? Take some time to consider activities that you can build into your teams and weekly routines across the business to help ease colleagues back into the office and back into their workplace relationships and team-building.
Your business will benefit by providing the space needed to allow colleagues to grow accustomed to cultivating offline relationships once again within the office environment, and allow better communications to grow across your company in the long-term, whether in the office or back working from home.
David Bell
CEO The HR Department
Those clubs with a Golfsure policy can avail of the HR Department Golfsure Hub that stores many documents useful for HR in the workplace - https://www.thehrdepartment.ie/
Here's how to boost employee motivation
Check out another great piece from David Bell by clicking the button below.
Article on employee motivation
The Magic Elixir!!!
Gregg Patterson
President, “Tribal Magic”
Creators of WOW---Builders of Community
People here in Southern California are devotees of “good health”. They wax poetic about hot yoga, Zen retreats and vile tasting, gluten free, macro biotic, “certified organic”, kale based, “ugly as sin but guaranteed to purge your toxins” uber-fashionable blended libations.
Yet these Good Health Enthusiasts NEVER mention the good health virtues of GOLF and the “Magic Elixir” delivered with every swing on every hole at every club on every day. Fact is, these characters snicker, smile and chuckle at the very mention of golf as The Deliverer of long term, big picture, broad spectrum GOOD HEALTH and happiness.
And it makes me droopy and poopy knowing that we who BELIEVE aren’t standing on our soap boxes and preaching to the cynical and the dismissive about “The Healthy Why” of Golf, don’t upend their bowl of macro biotic gooey goop and smack ‘em in the noggin with The Truth about The Big Picture Health benefits of the golfing experience!!!
It goes without saying that I’m a BELIEVER in golf as a deliverer of physical, mental and emotional “good health”. I’m convinced---golf delivers “more vitamins per dollar” than the competition. I’m convinced---golf is the Magic Elixir we need to defeat The Maladies of Modernity.
We who believe need talking points to smack down the unbelievers, to bring The Good Health Message to the masses.
Fellow Preachers, prime yourselves with------The Message!
Golf Delivers---“Back to Nature” Good Health
There’s no air conditioned, de-humidified, designer certified gym anywhere that can re-create a “re-creational” experience one seventieth as glorious as that delivered by the great outdoors. Golf serves up “Back to Nature” good health, the sort of joyous, uplifting, transcendent experience that comes from breathing fresh air, smelling cut grass, soaking up the rain or wrastlin’ with gators.
Golf Delivers---“My Body Just Got a Workout” Good Health
It’s a fact---walking eighteen holes is as good for Physical Good Health as running a five “K” race, rowing two miles or climbing El Capitan (almost!). Count the calories burned during a golf workout--- yoga stretch at the starter’s desk, four hour bag carry, multi-mile walk, bunker crawls, stream crossings, yoga stretch when it’s over, “elbow workout” in the bar, hundred yard dash to the car (hmmm). Talk about a work out! Talk about good health!
Golf Delivers---“What a Howl” Good Health
People who laugh are healthier than people who don’t. Most players play golf laughably, and if they see their shortcomings as a hoot, with laughter as a “bonding opportunity” (as psychologists tell us it is!!!), they’ll be ingesting a huge dollop of “What a Howl” good health whenever they play.
Golf Delivers---“I Escaped the Madness” Good Health
The world is filled with chaos. Traffic jams. E-mail. Voice-mail. Snail mail. Bitches. Moans. Break-downs. Golf is an escape---exiting the traffic, into the clubhouse, meet with friends, onto the fairway---“the world” evaporates. You’ve escaped and have discovered---golf is the antidote for the madness of modernity.
Golf Delivers---“I Love Spending Time with My Family” Good Health
A healthy family plays together and stays together. Golf delivers Family Good Health when the kids walk the course with Mamma and Pappa, carry their clubs and eat their burgers and dogs---together!---in the clubhouse. Golf becomes the “common experience” shared by the entire family---and “shared experience” is the foundation of Family Good Health.
Golf Delivers---“Talk Time” Good Health
Healthy people need relationships and community. Relationships and community are built on “talk time” with those relationships and that community. Golf delivers “talk time” opportunities and the social good health that talk time delivers---“talk time” in the locker room, “talk time” on the first tee, “talk time” while playing, “talk time” in the “debrief lounge”, “talk time” on the ride home, and “talk time” post-play over the phone, on the net, around the dinner table and near the water cooler at work. People who have good people to meet with and talk to, who have a “community of talkers” to engage with, are lots healthier than the “verbally challenged” but “digitally connected” of the world.
Golf Delivers---“Bump Into Others You Know” Good Health
Loneliness is corrosive, a demon that infects and corrupts and turns good health into bad. People need people, people who they know and people who know them. Golf delivers “Bump into Others You Know” Good Health opportunities. Golf delivers serendipitous “meetings” with dozens of people----with the gardener who talks to you about weeds; with Front Desk Sue who gives you the “hello” and “what have you been up to”; with the retirees who sit around and moan about “the way it was”; with the pro in the pro shop; with members on the first tee; with the greens keeper who waves, the marshal who shouts and the waitress who serves you the burger. Lots of unplanned “bump into others” opportunities that deliver gobs of “Bump Into Others You Know” good health buzz.
Golf Delivers---“Connect and Reflect” Good Health
People who reflect on what they’re doing, did do or want to do are healthier than those who let the demons grow and fester, infecting their psyches, corrupting their good health. A round of golf delivers four hours of “reflective opportunity” with friends and family, with mentors and followers, with the educated and the successful. Connecting and reflecting with interesting people helps purge the detritus that litters our lives and infects our spirits.
Golf Delivers---“I’m In Control---and Done Good” Good Health
People who have “psychic good health” get things done---they start and finish projects, have control throughout, appreciate the complexity of what needs doing and find satisfaction in knowing that some of what was done was “done good”. Golf is hugely satisfying---and healthy---because the golfer’s entirely responsible for what gets done, for choosing the club, gripping the weapon and whacking the ball. They make “golf happen.” And being “in control” in an “out of control” world is hugely healthy.
Golf Delivers---“We Teamed Up and Defeated the Enemy” Good Health
In the face of a “common enemy”, people pull together and get healthier, win or lose, because they’re a TEAM, a tribe, out to spank the competition. Golf provides a foursome the opportunity to team up to defeat the golf course---and, win or lose, they FEEL GOOD, healthier, a band of brothers.
Golf Delivers---“I Just Love Doing This” Good Health
For many who visit the gym, good health is WORK. Weights---ugh. Treadmill---ugh. Push-ups---ugh. Healthy, yes---but there’s no “I just love doing this” expressed by the pushers and the pullers, the spinners and the grunters. Golf, by contrast, delivers The Whole Package---physical, mental and emotional---and the people who play, SMILE!!! They laugh. They glow. They feel The Buzz. And whenever you do something you LOVE, good health happens.
Get Thee to the Golf Course
Good health is the foundation of The Good Life. Without Good Health you’ll be an underperforming boobie, fated to make less, enjoy less, absorb less, enlarge less and enrich less than the character who’s got The Goods.
Modernity gives us lots of ways of climbing the good health mountain. The gym. Ugh. The macro-biotic juice bar. Ugh. The grapefruit diet. Ugh.
Golf delivers Broad Spectrum Good Health---efficiently. Golf is “The Drug of Choice”, the “Magic Elixir” for curing what ails us.
So if you know someone who’s looking for a single “Good Health Investment,” whack ‘em in the side of the head and deliver The Message about the virtues of GOLF.
Go golfing. Get healthy. Feel the glow.
Spread the word.
And enjoy the journey--------------
From Sutton to San Diego
Great to see Jim Quinn of Sutton GC flying the Irish flag at the 2022 CMAA World Conference. We hope to catch up with Jim next month to find out how was his trip was like and if he has any tips for the next group of managers from Ireland that might make the trip in the coming years.
PAST EDUCATION
We had a fantastic session on Cyber Security with Andrea last week. While some missed the session, there is a great resource and documents in the following link that will add your club as we progress faster into the digital ages.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/4az8c1tz2gptr4x/AABrvSldRQSba03-9QjPnraaa?dl=0
Andrea Manning
Founder | CyberPie
Training & Consulting | Data Influence
+353 89 429 7806