Ask Stephen Follett to name the most important innovations introduced in his first five years as chief executive officer at the London Golf Club and it will need some time to narrow down the list.

It starts with growing the game of golf by encouraging and investing in the London Golf Club Academy, Junior Programme – The London Cubs – and goes on to include adding in aspects of golf fitness and mental fitness with the MindsetCaddy.

Transforming the venue to being a forward-thinking modern golfing facility, which is communicative and transparent with its membership, and carves a path within the industry comes next to be followed with driving the business to be more eco-friendly and ‘green’ with innovative plans for the future of the venue.

Like many golf clubs COVID hasn’t been the only challenge faced by the club in the last five years. As a semi-private club and therefore open to both members and visiting golfers, the growth in membership and general interest in the sport has caused them to review the way the business is run.

In the first two years of Follett’s tenure one of the main challenges was to fill the tee sheet with over 5,000 visitor rounds. The team responded admirably by beating this target hands down, then the goal moved on to how to maintain this level of activity.

“COVID saw this goal completely flip, with more members and more golfers wanting to visit and play,” he said.

“The challenge has now become how to offer sufficient tee times to both members and visitors – something that has to be managed on a daily basis and with no small degree of care.”

Recent events have shown that plans can sometimes need to change with little or no notice, having a back-up plan and being adaptable has been the most important lesson learned by the team in the last 18 months.

As a business, the London Golf Club aims to be forward-thinking and ‘the first’ to do something, looking to lead rather than follow. The many restrictions, and guidelines faced over the last 18 months has required the entire business to constantly think and rethink every possible situation and outcome.

“Going forward it is important for us to come up with ideas and have a plan but most importantly to always remain on our toes and be ready for whatever may be thrown at us.”

Staff shortages and supply chain issues creating a shortfall of products across all departments are some of the major challenges that have been the result of COVID.

“We have had to adapt areas of the business to deal with these issues, and we also found that being completely transparent with our members and visitors about that we are facing is hugely beneficial.

“It has also been helpful to make up for our setbacks by bringing about planned changes or reinvesting in other areas, such as introducing our new Powakaddy and Club Car buggy fleet in April 2021 and redecorating the Spike Bar at the beginning of the year.”

Like all successful businesses the London Golf Club takes great care with its staff, their selection, training, and career planning, should they desire it. But COVID has meant whole new levels of involvement and with no rule book to follow it has been vital to communicate effectively and often, especially throughout furlough.

“We have always found it important to show our employees that we care about their development,” Follett added. “At the start of the pandemic, we needed to show them that we also cared about their physical and mental well-being.

“Throughout the last 18 months we have kept everyone informed about what they can do to continue their training and development throughout the furlough period, offering training courses and opportunities to grow whilst we were all made to stay at home.

“Now that we are back in the business, we have worked extremely hard to reassess job roles and descriptions and to listen to feedback from staff members – asking what their goals are and how we can help them in their journey.”

It is particularly important to the club to grow from within and encourage existing staff to explore other departments or to utilise training programmes in order to make the next step in their career.

“We have recently signed agreements with three staff to support them as they work towards the PGA Foundation Degree.

“We also have multiple greenkeeping staff in training to receive agronomy qualifications, and two of our managers have just completed the CMAE coursework. It is one of our top priorities as a business to keep our staff growing and moving forward in their career journey with us.”

Keeping staff and working alongside them in their career has obvious benefits to the business and yet it isn’t the end game. Our goal is to develop the staff in such a way that they see the club as a steppingstone in their career,” admitted Follett.

“Having said that there are a number of staff that have been with the club for 15 or more years. We have recognised those employees’ commitment to the club with Long Service Awards and additional employee benefits such as an extra holiday or a free table at one of our Sunday lunches.”

The corporate side of the business has suffered terribly but given time corporate days and overseas visitor numbers are expected to return, reigniting an important side to the business and plans to spread golf events across multiple dates is already showing signs of success.

“If everything continues to improve, and there are no more shut-downs and no new COVID variations, travel restrictions will continue to ease, and things will get back to some semblance of ‘normal’, said Follett.

“Practically, and in the short term it is hard to tell exactly what to do to speed their return, we can only plan for a return to the way things used to be for larger groups.

“However, the pandemic has taught us to have a plan and to make it adaptable according to the situation we find ourselves in. To reflect this, we have a range of new ideas and package options that we feel confident will cater for the needs of these corporate groups.

“As long as we remain flexible, we can encourage our corporate clients to return with the knowledge and confidence that we will deliver our usual customer experience no matter what the circumstances.”

Growing the tournament legacy of the club have been import milestones, which Follett is keen to continue. “The venue has such a rich tournament history of which we are immensely proud, and we hope to continue this into the future.

“In the next five years my hope is that the facility continues to expand and grow to be a more all-around five-star venue. We hope to expand the offering to our members and to continue moving forward with our development as a venue/club.”

Looking further ahead the club recognises that it has a responsibility to carefully consider their environmental footprint, and there are serious plans to move towards carbon neutrality.

“I believe we all have to take this seriously, both at the London Golf Club and golf in general, he said. “As a business, it feels like we’ve done quite a lot with regards to sustainability but there must be more to it than planting trees and changing the types of light bulb we use. We have to do more.”