There is no doubt that Adare Manor in Limerick will be prepared to the very last detail ahead of hosting the 2027 Ryder Cup.
And the same level of rigour is applied to their staff onboarding process, as the Assistant Director of Golf and PGA Member Fraser Thomson discussed with us.
From new starter checklists to inductions and social occasions, Thomson and the team at Adare use various different strategies.
Here is what Thomson outlined as the key areas of success to ensure new employees are set up to succeed.
Onboarding begins with the job advert
There's a huge emphasis put on the onboarding process here. It certainly starts at the job advertisement stage from our talent and requisition manager, ensuring that the job is on brand with the resort, and through the conversations of inviting them to the initial meeting or interview, and then the interview process itself.
The big thing for us is that in our onboarding process, we look at what they expect of us, as much as what we expect of them. That's a big thing that we look at to try and engage our staff members and our brand – but also looking at what we can do for them to make their work life more positive than in their other experiences.
What do you want to achieve at Adare Manor? What do you want to get out of your six, seven months at Adare Manor? We put that to them so that, come their tenure with us, they've got the experience that they wanted.
Pictured: Assistant Director of Golf at Adare Manor Fraser Thomson
Balance information overload with necessary details
One of the most common mistakes is the overloading of information while neglecting the emotional intelligence side of it, the emotional engagement.
It's really important for us that we make and develop that emotional engagement. When you start working with us, whether it's full time, seasonal or casual, you start with a two-day induction. That’s a resort induction with their training and development manager. But within that, you'll meet all of the head of departments of each area.
They'll come in and do a brief talk in their area itself, so they can meet the faces, whether it's food and beverage or a finance team. They meet those people at the start of their induction, and we try to ensure that it's a walk-around induction.
Stick to the new starter checklist
What the process looks like from a chef to a golf pro may differ in terms of the information, but the goal is always the same.
We have a new starter checklist that we give every team member when they start with us. That allows us to sit down as Heads of Department (HoD) and go through their two-day induction and get any feedback and how we can improve our areas – and then we can start to go into what that job responsibility would look like in the golf operations team.
We break that down to the retail team, to our bag drop attendant, our range attendant, our locker room steward, our first tee starters. What we have within that is a checklist, so when we do a walk-around of each area of the business or the golf department, we show them an introduction.
Once we show them an introduction, we both work together, and we tick it off and make sure we're comfortable with that. We tick it when it's in training and then after three months, we'll sit down and we'll just update it to see what they really believe they've achieved, and then anything they haven't achieved and what more training we can do to be achieved in that area.
Pictured: The golf course at Adare Manor
Offer repeated feedback
When you look at the new generation coming through, they're looking for more feedback and constant feedback. The way we give feedback is really important. We do sessions here with a training development manager. HoDs and managers can go to these training sessions, and one of them is how to deliver feedback.
Not all feedback is positive, but how can we deliver negative feedback and make it positive and make it more of a learning tool, as opposed to just negative feedback?
Negative feedback, from a managerial point of view, is something you try to avoid, but it's about how we change the mindset of negative feedback.
“We developed a team engagement group about two years ago and we drive a calendar of events to improve the overall staff engagement across the resort” - Fraser Thomson
Bond through social occasions
We developed a team engagement group about two years ago and we drive a calendar of events to improve the overall staff engagement across the resort.
We sit down at this time of year, we look at next year, and we'll bring in all the events that were successful this year, and we'll re-look at some of the events that might not have been successful. Certain things that we celebrate here might be Chinese New Year, or Pride Month.
We had a self-care day, which was in July. It could be something as simple as Canadian Day or something like that, we’ll post about it, wish everyone a happy Canadian Day.
We will do days out. We'll do staff parties. We have padel courts here, so staff do padel on Tuesday and Thursday nights. We'll do a padel tournament every couple of months, we’ll invite staff members to join up and then compete in the padel tournament.
We’ll also have things like a spring into summer party. And we'll have an ice cream truck every month. We will have a Christmas party, an end of year party. We will have a Family Fun Day, which you can bring your children to. We also have a Christmas party for family team members’ kids as well.
