By Trent Bouts

In the wake of natural and manmade disasters, many operators are taking a serious look at workplace safety

For a moment, imagine planes zeroing in on Congressional Country Club just as they did on The Pentagon and the World Trade Center’s twin towers during the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. It’s an especially unsavory thought, yet that’s exactly the type of vile scenario Mike Leemhuis forced himself to consider in the wake of that terrible day. As a result, Congressional, one of the most storied golf clubs in the nation and a regular haunt for some of Washington’s most powerful political figures, eventually hired A.J. Marshall a full-time safety, security and loss prevention officer.
 
“It’s a mouthful and he hates having to say it when he shakes hands,” says Leemhuis, general manager of Congressional. “But it leaves you with no doubt as to what his role is.” More importantly, the results have been profound: In nine months since the position was created, Congressional’s injury rate among employees, members and guests has dropped 75 percent, mostly in the area of slips, trips and falls.
 
No doubt, the road from international terrorism to better lighting in a stairwell seems like it should be a long one, but Leemhuis found it to be a straight run. “We have always taken safety and security seriously but especially since 9/11,” he says. “Just because of our name alone.”
 
Leemhuis admits there was concern that “congress” in the club’s letterhead, coupled with proximity to Washington, D.C., might amount to target enough for terrorists more familiar with Al Jazeera than The Golf Channel. Consequently, the harder he examined the biggest and the baddest “what ifs,” the more it made sense to address even the smallest and seemingly most benign threats as well.
 
Interestingly, Leemhuis’ rationale for club safety is strikingly similar to that applied by Rudy Giuliani with his “broken window” approach while mayor of New York. Giuliani tackled broader issues of crime and sagging urban pride by strictly policing the most minor incidents. Drumming home the message that the small stuff mattered inspired a cultural shift that helped polish the Big Apple.

“We’ve scrubbed this place backwards and forwards,” Leemhuis says of Congressional, a 500-acre campus with approximately 400 employees. “We’ve done knife training with chefs, instruction on how to pick up things properly—you name it. Of course, there’s a cost but we’ve seen tremendous benefits. The position and program has more than paid for itself.”

Looking Beyond the Obvious

Singular though Congressional’s combination of title and geography may be, others in the golf industry followed a similar path from 9/11. Pat Roselli, founder and principal of Massachusetts-based GolfSafe, a company that designs safety plans for golf facilities, is certain a good deal of his business stems from anxiety spawned in 2001. How much? “Greater than 50 percent of it,” Roselli says. “There was a real peak of interest shortly after 9/11, then it leveled off. Then, we had (Hurricane) Katrina.”

In Roselli’s experience, the enormity of the September 11 terrorist attacks, supplemented by Katrina, forced some course operators who became his clients to examine their own organizational health. Disintegrating skyscrapers and submerged cities may be several light years beyond the worst that could befall a golf facility, but the model of event, loss, repair and retribution can be overlaid readily enough. As leaders, owners or managers, some course operators dared consider a day when they might be held to account on matters of prevention, preparedness and response.

“Addressing those things is now a fundamental business decision,” Roselli says. “It’s more than buying a defibrillator and just bolting in on the wall—we’ve gone way beyond that. Business operators are looking at safety in the sense of what it might mean if their business can’t operate for a period of time because of an accident or event. How can they protect their clients and their customers?”

Dana Blose, senior risk control consultant with Travelers Insurance, has spent 20 years in the business, the last 10 of them specializing in golf. He fervently agrees with the contention that good safety is good for business. He’s equally emphatic that, although there are exceptions, the golf industry as a whole isn’t there yet. Too many people have their head in the proverbial (bunker) sand.
 
“I think if they (course operators) haven’t experienced a fatality or a serious injury, the frequency in the industry is low enough they feel like it’s far removed from them,” Blose says. “Okay, it happens but, you know, it’s not going to happen to me.”

Of course, it does happen to someone sooner or later. From the start of 2003, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics adjusted its accounting parameters, to the end of 2006, 51 people have died as a result of accidents at golf courses and country clubs in the United States. Injuries, serious or otherwise, are harder to count because in that area the BLS includes golf under “miscellaneous amusement and recreation services.” However, the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), administered by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, reported 37,891 golf-related injuries in 2006.

NEISS statistics are extrapolated from the emergency room activity at more than 100 hospitals across the nation. As such, they’re not necessarily precise measures of how dangerous the golf business can be. For example, one incident that fell into NEISS’s golf basket last year reads: “Child witnessed by cousin to have repeatedly hit himself on head with a golf ball. Now with drowsiness…Closed head injury.”
 
Regardless of the source, numbers and trends lose any relevance whatsoever when you become the victim or are linked to that person, whether it be as a colleague, employer, spouse or child. So while 51 fatalities in golf over four years puts golf low on the list of hazardous industries, that is scant consolation to the parties involved.

Roselli points to an incident at one Massachusetts club in recent years where a golf course maintenance worker fell from a tractor and was crushed beneath a wheel. Co-workers called 911 and emergency services arrived at the club within minutes, but couldn’t find their way to the particular spot on the course where the worker lay fighting for his life. No one knew what to do. There was no plan. No one had been trained. The worker died.
 
For Roselli, who started his career as a paramedic, the sense of panic on the part of the coworkers and the helplessness of the EMS personnel, probably just hundreds of yards away, remains palpable. “Everyone was completely beside themselves,” he says. “And on top of that, literally across the street, was a full-service hospital with ER facilities.”

Scenarios like these pain Randy Register, a former safety and environmental officer at Augusta National Golf Club who now provides safety-consulting services for golf. A former golf course superintendent, Register knows how to speak the language of those in what he describes as “the most dangerous” sector of the game. He also knows how to get them talking.
 
“I’ve heard so many horror stories when I’ve thrown the floor open after giving a talk,” he says. “I would say most clubs do not have written emergency action plans as a first step. If a club doesn’t have one, they need one.”

That’s not just a matter of good sense; it’s a matter of law. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) decrees that businesses with 11 employees or more must have written emergency action plans, among other things. Why clubs might be in breach of OSHA rules appears to be a twofold issue. One boils down to money. Many golf operations are constantly battling for profits. As such, investments are more often directed at protecting or enhancing revenue. The other is a matter of priorities.
 
“I look at golf as being one of the more dangerous industries,” Blose says. “The problem is that for many people at the helm, their focus is on customer satisfaction or number of rounds played, those type of things. A manager has to wear many departmental hats—landscaping, retail, recreation, restaurant, bar and so on—and he has to apply the focus of what he was hired for (more rounds or more members) to each of those operations.
 
“I bet if you look at his budget, you won’t see a line item for safety,” he adds. “It’s very difficult to get people to heed the call to arms on safety because it’s not sexy.”
 
The trick, Blose says, is framing every conversation in dollar terms. For example, a facility’s safety record dictates the cost of its insurance. If the record is bad enough, costs skyrocket and, in extreme cases, can prompt insurers to dump the client. Higher premiums, whether for liability or workers’ compensation, can take a heavy bite out of profits or require a significant boost in revenues to cover the cost.

More Than Numbers

Looking beyond insurance costs, safety impacts productivity. Injuries mean days off work or, at the very least, reduced duties. Replacing an injured worker with temporary help increases labor costs and further burdens supervisors or coworkers who have to train or oversee the newcomer. Serious injuries can also affect morale among colleagues, reducing their enthusiasm for the task.

Then, there’s the potential damage to a facility’s image. Negative publicity, whether by word of mouth or newspaper headlines, can influence where golfers choose to spend their time and money. Finally, there are the lawyers and the potential for lawsuits. An incident that leads to legal action can finish a business.
 
To underscore how devastating the latter can be, consider a 2006 report in the Insurance Journal that listed several of the largest settlements or jury verdicts involving golf courses. They ranged from $1.4 million that was awarded to a man who tripped over landscaping timber to $10.5 million paid to a construction worker who was injured in a trench. Even if a course has insurance, how much is enough?

The author of that report, Michael Kraker from St. Paul, Minnesota, loves the game and his work, hence his specialty in golf law and his Web site, www.golflawyer.com. “The only people who fully comprehend just how disruptive a personal injury lawsuit can be to the operation of a golf course are those who have been through it,” he says. “It’s incredibly time-consuming and frustrating, and can really take a personal toll on staff involved.”

Stories like these—not to mention the financial and emotional tolls they leave in their wake—are exactly the reason experts advocate a proactive approach to facility safety and preparedness.

At Boca West Country Club in Boca Raton, Florida, a key part of the overall safety strategy is serving as an ally for the injured party. “It sounds simple, but we do like to think of ourselves as family and that means showing you care,” says Barbara Crowley, human resources director of Boca West. “Constant communication can really improve the likelihood of managing a claim without the intervention of a third party like an attorney.”

That communication often involves sending a hand-written card or bouquet of flowers to the injured worker or club member. Crowley says the club will also work to ensure that health care providers and insurers provide a satisfactory level and speed of service.

Against this entire backdrop is a simple fact that would appear to minimize all the efforts of individual operators and advice of the safety experts. As OSHA’s Bill Grimes, puts it: “In a nutshell, golf courses are not on our list of concerns.” Grimes serves as the assistant regional director for cooperative and state programs for an eight-state region in the Southeast. On the ladder of high-risk industries, golf effectively still has two feet on the ground.

Then again, all of Steve Irwin’s years of experience as the Crocodile Hunter weren’t enough to protect him from a stingray’s barb. The point being is that “it”—or the “if” in “life,” as one notable insurance company’s slogan proclaims—can happen to the best of them. “Bad things happen to good golf courses,” Blose says. “With the stakes so high, why wouldn’t you do what you can to minimize the risk?”

Moreover, insurance industry data shows that 90 percent of all accidents are behavioral—that is, caused by somebody’s actions rather than something like an equipment malfunction. In theory, changing behavior, therefore, becomes a powerful tool. But Blose, like Leemhuis and even Rudy Giuliani, will tell you that a community’s behaviors only change when the direction is set from the top down.

“It’s less about earth-shattering specifics than it is about the culture,” Leemhuis says. “It’s not what you do with tree branches, poor lighting in the parking lot or repairing a carpet tear. Good safety requires top-of-mind awareness from department heads on down.

“If I show an interest, then department heads know it’s valued and that feeds down to their staff members,” he adds. “It’s about doing the right thing in the right way. Take care of that and you will be successful.”

Trent Bouts is a South Carolina-based freelance writer.