I haven’t written a while about The Shire London, the only Seve Ballesteros designed course in the UK.
So I wondered what they are coming up with for 2020. In short, affordable luxury, on and off the course.
The Shire London: affordable luxury
Let’s see, how do they define affordable luxury. Here are some of their recent investments:
- No temporary greens.
- The use of Pure Distinction Bentgrass interseeded on the greens, meaning the uniquely bright green grass has an exceptionally strong resistance to disease, extreme temperature changes, and general wear, affording golfers the opportunity to play the course in excellent condition all-year-round.
- The same quality of grass has also been used on The Shire London’s new premium short game practice area, enabling golfers to hone their skills on immaculate condition greens in 2020.
- Creation of special golf days like the Andy Cole and Trevor Nelson Golf Days and after the success of this year’s first, the Darren Barker Boxing Golf Day Invitational.
- Adding VPAR and Trackman. Golf just like other sports is becoming more and more data-driven. Such data can enhance the golf experience of the guest/member. The next step should be utilizing artificial intelligence (for training and performance analysis) and machine learning for game improvement. The movie Moneyball (with Brad Pitt) is a great explanation of data-driven sport.
- The Shire London look to further cement their ties with Severiano Ballesteros by incorporating navy blue into their branding, a color synonymous with the legendary five-time major champion. Seve was known famously for his navy-blue jumper, white shirt and blue trouser combination throughout his incredible golfing career and beyond.
Course conditioning is not everything!
No doubt, course conditioning has a significant impact on golfers’ decision which golf course to prefer.
At the same time, we should understand that there are many other factors that are as important as course conditioning.
The National Golf Foundation (US) found last month that these are the 6 factors that golfers are considering:
The course conditioning is just one factor out of 6!
I hope in the near future investments of The Shire London will appear investing in employee experience as well.
The advanced organizations will pay attention to the following areas of employee experience development in 2020:
- Focus on creating an inspiring company culture;
- Building emotional and social connections with their employees + between employees;
- Moving away from annual or bi-annual employee reviews to real-time employee mood measurement and analysis. The CAUSE is employee experience, while the effect is an engaged workforce. Here are some great employee engagement softwares: Beekeeper, Clarity Wave, Officevibe, Branch Messenger, etc.
- Redefining the Reason for Being by considering these 4 factors:
- It focuses on the impact on the world and people,
- Is NOT centered on financial gain,
- Is something attainable,
- Ignites employees.
- Utilizing people analytics: for instance to optimize your recruitment process and reduce recruitment costs by creating an ‘ideal professional‘ profile for each job (e.g. greenkeeper, waiter, PGA professional, etc.) or to research the effects of investments in training and development on business outcomes.
- Diversity and equal opportunities. More women to leadership positions!