Skills and Labour Shortages

Coming out of covid and the UK’s withdrawal from the EU has really highlighted significant skills and labour shortages in many industries, with the grounds care sector being no different.

Skills and labour shortages are often considered as being the same, however, there is a slight difference between the two.

• A labour shortage can refer to where employers have a need for workers that exceeds the number of people that are available, and this is often seen where there is a lack of candidates applying for a job position. A limited pool of people to support the demand from employers to not just maintain, but also to grow, their businesses will require a rethink of employability, mechanisation and automation.

• A skills shortage can be either
(a) where there is a lack of candidates that have applied with the required minimum requirement of skills, qualifications or experience for the job position, or
(b) an adequate number of candidates who apply for a job, having the required minimum qualification/s, some relevant skills and experience, but not an adequate amount or to the expected extent to fulfil the requirements of the job role. For this latter situation candidates may be lacking current technical skills, or adequate soft skills which could have been developed within a workplace if the candidate had been actively involved with continuous professional development.
(c) A third possibility can arise where some candidates can be significantly overqualified for a particular role, but do not have the relevant softer employability skills or practical technical skills to fulfil requirements.

In the case of option (b) and (c) an employer could implement a customised onboarding and re-skilling / upskilling programme so as not to lose a potential candidate.

For an individual who is overqualified it would be important to explore the motivational reason for the application as well as how the individual would adapt to maintaining adequate motivation to succeed in the role because it may not be demanding enough for them in the medium to longer term, unless they are only interested in the role as a short-term stopgap, which may or may not be appropriate for the employer.

Some possibilities why there is a lack of applicants or suitable applicants (new and those already employed but not wanting to move) for a job in the grounds care industry can include some of the following:
• A lack of awareness, understanding of, and relative visibility of the sector.
• They do not have a desire to work outdoors in varying weather conditions.
• There is no desire or essential need to gain relevant qualifications.
• Routine learning for updating and upskilling is not seen as a priority to ensure currency of employability and technical skills is maintained.
• They do not consider there are adequate progression opportunities, especially within suitable timescales to develop a successful career.
• It is not seen as a profession which can provide a suitable and comfortable lifestyle.
• It is rarely considered as a first-choice option for school leavers, especially higher achievers, and this effectively creates a self-fulfilling prophecy of attracting those at the lower end of the potential candidate pool.
• It is considered a predominantly low skilled profession, especially when many job adverts require low level qualifications for senior roles, for example a level 2 or occasionally a level 3 for a head grounds manager type role.
• With the number of volunteers maintaining sports pitches the low skill requirement is just reinforced, as essentially it can be seen as a hobby, like gardening, by many people.
• When compared with pay, conditions and opportunities in many other sectors the grounds care sector, in general, is perceived as being towards the bottom of the pile.
• There is often much appreciation of the work carried out by ground staff, but this is rarely reciprocated in pay and conditions, resulting in some feeling somewhat undervalued in the role.
• The sports turf sub-sector can be seen as providing less opportunities than other horticulture sub-sectors.

There are some significant negative perceptions and issues with working in the grounds care sector, however, there are also many positives which are more often than not promoted, but the negatives have been evident for many years, at least a quarter of a century, and little is done to actually address them: This continues to perpetuate the problem of skills and labour shortages.

How might this be addressed differently from what has gone before? This is certainly a challenging question to answer, but the difficulty of getting to core issues should not be ignored or side stepped as is often done because it can raise some uncomfortable answers.

Employers might consider additional approaches to try and attract and retain employees, as well as maintain the success of the company, including:
• Have more flexible starting and finishing times, to provide a more suitable work-life balance for employees.
• Encourage flexible working with defined core hours but allowing extra hours to be worked (’banked’) and then allowing maybe up to 1-day during the following month to be taken as a benefit for having worked extra hours. This should not cost anything to an employer, as the full hours have been worked but in a way that provides an additional benefit to a worker.
• Promote, encourage and invest more in continuous learning opportunities, not just work focused but also for personal interest.
• Improve internal career progression opportunities, even within small companies. This may see employees gradually changing the emphasis of their work inputs to different types of activities as the years at the company increase, taking on different types of responsibilities and elements of other job roles, which may also mean changing job titles (and salaries) as longevity increases. This will increase the flexibility of the company due to increased skills within the company and provide opportunities for other workers to be employed as it expands or increases productivity or range of services offered.
• Encourage and support a certain number of days where an employee visits other workplaces in the same sector, to observe and understand their working practices, providing opportunities to improve their own working practices.
• Encourage, support and facilitate positive networking with others in the sector.
• Increase mechanisation and automation, where practical.
• Increase digital decision support applications to improve effectiveness of grounds management decision making and efficiency of maintenance activities.
• Improve employment conditions, making sure they are reflected of modern requirements.
• Improve workplace facilities, trying to replicate a home-from-home type of facility in appropriate areas of the workplace.
• Ensure administrative systems are lean, effective and efficient and not cumbersome and / or tiresome to comply with.
• Ensure salary and benefits are competitive with other sectors.
• Involve workers more in decision making and investment in success of the business. Have feedback and suggestion opportunities which are actively reviewed.
• Introduce a more flexible approach to hiring temporary staff to assist during peak periods to ease work pressures on full time staff.
• Improve managerial people skills. For example, being more active in implementing motivational techniques, empathy and better understanding of worker needs, being more approachable, or having a more appropriate rapport, can creative a much more conducive atmosphere for staff satisfaction, improved morale and maybe even improved productivity. The cost of changing managerial attitudes and behaviours can and should be minimal, more a change of mindset.
• Improve team integrity, sense of belonging and organisational culture to create even more of a shared value for the successful operation and longevity of a business.
• Provide wider recognition of the value of ground staff to the local and wider community, ensuring achievements are appropriately acknowledged and rewarded (which doesn’t have to be a financial reward). Ensure users of sports facilities fully understand the efforts and skills needed to produce a safe and fit for purpose playing surface.
• Reduce entry requirements to employment but enhance onboarding and an initial upskilling programme to bring new employees ‘up to speed’ in a speedy yet effective way.
• Promoting health and well-being benefits of outdoor and physical work can be improved, to reinforce this added value of working in the sector.
• Re-assess the work schedule throughout the year, especially when inclement weather is typically expected to potentially utilise worker skills in areas that are not exposed to poor weather conditions.
• If salary changes / increases are not a realistic proposition, there may be a possibility to consider maintaining normal working hours during spring, summer and autumn, but during the winter the working hours are reduced (without any reduction in salary) to compensate for working in less-than-ideal environmental conditions as well as the likelihood that outdoor work would be less during this season than others. This would increase a worker’s hourly rate, potentially without increasing employment costs.
• Engage more with local schools and colleges, offering periodic support to teachers / tutors to explain what is involved in managing a business, employability skills involved and more specifically what is also involved in grounds care. This will help create a local partnership, raise awareness of the sector and provide a showcase for potential recruits upon completing the period of study. The costs of this approach will be significantly less than the recruitment process for a member of staff and can be considered as an investment in the future for the business.
• Promote the environmental and social benefits of the work carried out by the business in the grounds care sector. Younger people, in particular, may be more inclined to consider job roles in businesses that can positively contribute to addressing environmental and climate concerns, as well as being more socially responsible, so providing a focus in these areas, especially when associated with partnership projects may help the local skills and labour shortages.
• Review the complete package offered to attract workers and to retain employees within a company. Question and challenge all that is and is not on offer and continually improve the offering to maintain a successful business.