With warmer weather approaching, your agency will begin hiring seasonal employees to help with maintenance and recreation program delivery. In addition to helping them understand the policies and procedures at your agency, you also need to train them for the jobs they will be doing — and the equipment they will be using — so they can safely perform their duties.
Dundee Township and Highland Park have developed ways of incorporating PDRMA’s Injury Prevention Program (PIPP) into the seasonal orientation process to ensure new staff uses PIPP safety programs and ergonomic and stretching resources to avoid injuries.
“PDRMA is a tremendous resource for putting together a safety training program — we rely on that for everything we do,” Dundee Township Park District Golf Course Superintendent Mike Sprouse and Office Manager Ronalda Randich agree.
  “Nearly all of our orientation program is based on PIPP, from using on-demand videos from the website for spur-of-the-moment, rainy day training sessions to borrowing DVDs for my scheduled training events. PDRMA constantly updates the information, so I always have a good feeling that what I’m sharing with the guys is current and accurate,” says Randich, who is responsible for developing and implementing training for both golf courses operated by the park district. “In fact, we start each day with a series of six stretching exercises to get our bodies loosened up and the juices flowing. It only takes a few minutes to complete, and the program has been well received by our staff.”
Sprouse and Randich find group training sessions work best at Dundee for three reasons — they are more efficient, employees are more relaxed, and the quizzes encourage discussion. “In a group setting, no one is under pressure to get an answer right,” says Sprouse. “We learn from mistakes and go back and review.”
“We’ve turned it into a game,” Randich adds, “throwing candy to the person who answers the question correctly. The guys love it. And if I forget the candy, they want to know where it is!”
 Sprouse and Randich take it a step further in engaging staff in job-specific training, too. A majority of the golf staff at the agency is Spanish speaking, so the training accommodates that. “Our job-specific training is always done in the employee’s native language,” Randich explains. “All of our training is specific to the piece of equipment the employee uses and the task he performs. We also try to schedule some type of safety training every week.”
Brian Green, Golf Course Superintendent at Park District of Highland Park, takes advantage of both individual and group training opportunities with his seasonal hires. He set up two computer monitors, one in a break room at his facility on the golf course and the other in the parks building across the street. The two locations share a laptop whenever they need someone to watch one of PDRMA’s PIPP videos.
“The laptop is nice because I can do training for just one person, easily and efficiently,” he says. “And it’s easy to bring the laptop back and forth between the two buildings — for an individual employee or to do a group training program, like when the weather is bad outside.
“I’ve downloaded a number of videos for both golf course and park maintenance that are really sweet,” Green explains. “They’re short, professionally done and really informative.”
Green uses PIPP resources to develop his own personal training programs, downloading videos and tailoring a training session about specific equipment or terrain. “After I show them the Slip, Trip and Fall video, we talk about a specific hill they have to go up and down or places that become slippery after it rains.”
Use your orientation time wisely with seasonal hires and include these — and other — PIPP resources along with information about your agency’s policies and procedures to prevent losses and improve safety:
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Navigating the seasonal hiring waters can be a challenge, but keep these five key points in mind for successful seasonal hiring:
1 Contact last year’s supervisor to determine how this worker performed previously, and be sure to do an end-of-season evaluation on everyone hired this year.
2 Check previous employers for references and provide accurate information if contacted for a reference. PDRMA General Counsel Steve Kleinman can help you craft a good-faith reference to provide candid information without exposing your agency to potential liability exposure.
3 Address performance issues in a timely manner.
4 Conduct pre-employment drug screening for seasonal hires. Word spreads quickly as to which agencies do not test for drugs, so if your agency does not test, you may inadvertently be attracting employees you do not want to hire.
5 Be sure your orientation includes information about agency personnel policies. Give each seasonal employee a copy of key policies such as Respectful Workplace/Sexual Harassment, Drug and Alcohol Free Workplace Policy, anti-discrimination, attendance and related conduct policies. |
