Award-winning Greywolf Golf Course, part of Panorama Mountain Village in the Kootenay Rockies region, has one more distinction to add to its long list of accolades.
Consistently rated among the top courses in Canada, Greywolf can now lay claim to being the first golf course in British Columbia to become certified under go2’s Certificate of Recognition (COR) program.
“One of the most important aspects for us in going through the program is to minimize the risks of any incidents and to improve awareness among all our staff of the importance of working safe,” says Chad Thomlinson, Director of Golf at Greywolf Golf Course.
Panorama Mountain Village fosters a health and safety culture across its entire organization. The resort was one of the first BC tourism businesses to receive COR certification for its ski operations in January 2011.
“Greywolf prides itself on being one of the finest golf courses in the country and with the COR certification we are ensuring that the entire experience – for our employees and our customers – is of the finest quality,” says Ryan Stimming, Risk Manager at Panorama Mountain Village.
In addition to the financial incentives, businesses that embrace a culture of workplace health and safety are seeing significant human resource upsides, including fewer employee injuries, injured employees returning to work sooner, and greater success in retaining and attracting the best talent.
Thomlinson says there are many benefits of going through the COR process. It helped the golf course review all its tasks, even those that were typically taken for granted as being too simple or not important enough to track for health and safety considerations.
“It is going to help us improve our new crew training each year. We have also altered our mowing patterns on the course to reduce the amount of mowing done on dangerous slopes,” Thomlinson points out.
“We will definitely be marketing our COR certification prominently in our HR recruiting efforts, in the recruitment section of our website, as well as in our pre-arrival training and information manuals,” he adds.
The cost to go through the COR training and audit process is modest and, in most cases, is less than the initial rebate following certification. Future savings flow straight to the bottom line.
