Grounds Care Industry Challenges

Some of the issues in 2022 that are challenging those involved in the grounds care industry include the following (in no particular order):

1. Reducing local authority budgets make it more difficult to provide a suitable range of amenity and sports surfaces. There is a minimum input required to maintain a surface to a suitable and safe standard and the pressures on local authorities due to continued financial constraints exacerbates the problem. The health and welfare benefits of green spaces and sports surfaces are well documented, yet local authority expenditure on the departments which maintain these areas is miniscule, especially when compared with educational and social welfare budgets. The return on investment is much less tangible than many services or products because the correlation between the maintenance and benefits is complex.

With greater pressures being made on local authority budgets, many facilities are being outsourced or self-managed by amateur clubs, whilst those sports surfaces continued to be maintained by a local authority are basic, yet safe, in the majority of cases due to the cost of providing better quality surfaces, for which many clubs would resist paying the real cost of pitch provision for the desired quality.

2. Skills gap: There has, arguably, been a net skills drain within the industry ever since the introduction of CCT (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) in the late 1980s for the provision of local authority grounds maintenance services. Training departments were effectively eliminated and whilst the principles of getting good value for money for council taxpayers was sound, the implementation was ineffective in that many specifications were poorly described, whilst a low-quality outcome was consequently priced by contractors and council work forces competing for the grounds maintenance contracts.

Under investment by employers has also contributed to the current skills gap, with one strong argument why this has arisen being that many employers have not recognised the benefits from education and training and have been reluctant to invest their own monies into developing their workforce. This situation has proven quite unsustainable and employers are now reaping the little seed they have sown in the past.

3. Staffing shortage: Directly related to the skills gap is that of inadequate staffing within the industry. With the (mis-)management of Brexit and the impact of covid, there is increasing demand within the industry for staff to fill job vacancies, with many other industries looking a lot more attractive, especially for career advancement, than that within the grounds care industry.

Pay and working conditions in particular are relatively poor, so whilst the work itself can be very enjoyable and rewarding, as a career perspective, things look quite different and not as enticing.

One particular aspect which has not been previously mentioned is that of the number of hobby ground staff (i.e. volunteers) within the industry. This situation is a double-edged sword in that without them many pitches would just not be safe to play on, yet with them they also limit the opportunities for paid employment and expansion of the professional side of the industry. There aren't swaths of volunteer builders, electricians, gas fitters, solicitors, accountants, etc. competing with the skilled trades people and professionals for their job activities, so why should the grounds care industry be any different? Clearly there is no easy answer to this probably unique situation, but it is certainly one that impacts on many aspects of worker recruitment and retention.

If a staffing shortage persists, and this looks likely for some time, then different approaches to maintenance and management will be needed: the use of decision support systems can help complement skills and knowledge in making better use of available resources; increased automation, especially for the mowing activity, will ease the demand on available labour; reflecting on and changing social perceptions of what is required form a playing surface will also be needed, so for example, why is there the desire to create unblemished turfgrass swards which is unnatural and requires ever increasing resources?

4. Reducing quality of available qualifications: This is quite a contentious issue, however, since the 2000s new qualification frameworks were introduced to help rationalise the range of qualifications available. However, the achievement and assessment requirements for many of the qualifications left room for a wide range of interpretations by training providers delivering them and this led to a 'race to the bottom' in which most horticulture-based qualifications become a tick box exercise.

Firstly, there were NVQs, then Work-based diplomas, along with other vocational qualifications within the mix. The learning challenge for students was variable although the knowledge and skills gained supposedly made them 'competent' within a defined context of the qualification but limited their potential to develop additional capability to think outside the box when unfamiliar situations arose.

The introduction of newer apprenticeship standards aimed to address some of the problems, with learners being assessed by a third party who had no relationship to the apprentice, employer, or training provider delivering the apprenticeship programme to the learner.

The overall range of qualifications might be considered relatively limited to satisfactory depending on an individual's perspective, but the main issue is that quality should be paramount, providing a learner with a genuinely fit for purpose qualification, not one which meets the supposed needs of training providers and employers.

5. Changing social perceptions. With the impact television has on sporting events it is becoming even more challenging for groundstaff to produce the pristine surfaces demanded by the media. High expectations have become the norm, with few people outside of the industry having an understanding of the resources and inputs needed to maintain surfaces to exacting standards. A good example of the challenges is that of reducing pesticide availability to control some weeds, pests and diseases which can seriously disfigure a grass surface. This also links back to item one and with amateur clubs wanting to use local authority facilities that look like those that they see on television yet are not happy to pay anywhere near a suitable cost for the provision of the surface. Clearly, the same inputs to those of professional surfaces cannot realistically be provided by local authorities, but appropriate budgets need to be provided to give groundstaff a chance of producing a safe and suitable quality surface.

6. Raising the image of the grounds care industry: Unfortunately, a common societal perception is that our industry is generally low skilled, albeit with pockets of medium to very high skills, and the 'classic' image is that of a grass surface with an older, white, male worker mowing the grass.

Maybe this is a little stereotypical, but it is probably fairly representative of society's image of the profession. This couldn't actually be further from the truth as groundsmanship is essentially about the application of environmental science to create safe and appropriate amenity and sports surfaces which enhance the natural (and surrounding built) environment to provide enjoyment and pleasure to millions.

How well the truer picture is understood and respected by society will influence many of the other issues identified here, although significant efforts have been made by the Grounds Management Association to continue to raise the professions image for many years now.

7. Climate change: Changing patterns of rainfall and intensity impact on drainage design and pitch specification requirements, as well as playability and potential match cancellations.

Warmer temperatures also increasing the range and period of potential harm from pests and diseases, whilst also at the same time increasing moisture levels held within the atmosphere leading to heavier downpours and flash flooding. The availability of water supplies for the irrigating of many sports surfaces will also become more limited, with greater demands being made by society on limiting supplies and how these should be prioritised.

8. Reducing the availability of the range of pesticides to control weeds, pests and diseases. It becomes more difficult, but not impossible, to manage turfgrass surfaces to high standards with the limiting availability of pesticides. The need for improved, or maybe just correctly applied, cultural and physical practices, along with newer biological controls is essential. Directly linked to this is the need to ensure detailed technical knowledge is understood by groundstaff to allow good practice to be routinely applied.

9. Keeping up to date and well informed with technological developments: There are many technological innovations within the industry, with new equipment and materials regularly coming onto the market, rapidly advancing (ubiquitous) web and mobile technology for communication, legislation and regulatory changes and changing work practices which make it essential for everyone in the industry to keep their knowledge and skills up to date to ensure they comply with the law and also make the best use of often limited resources.

10. Engaging with sustainability; in particular, by what is meant by this term, which is banded around quite liberally and everything seems to be sustainable this and sustainable that but with little thought as to what it really means. Raising the debate will also help to raise the image of the profession, although there are many interested parties within the industry who might see this as a threat to their business model.