Qualitative Growth

The enhancement of something, which does not require a consumption of natural resources. Improving human development, well-being, happiness, empathy for others, the overall quality of life, as well as improved air quality, soil quality, biodiversity, water quality – all through better pollution controls and less overuse and consumption of natural resources – can contribute to qualitative growth, without an increase in quantitive growth. It is relatively easy to extract natural resources, manufacture a product and grow an economy through societal consumption, however, this almost inevitably has negative impacts on the environment, wealth distribution and social cohesion, and is having increasingly negative short-term consequences for global climate, let alone for the medium or long term and for future generations of humans and wildlife.
Within the grounds care industry qualitative growth can relate to a range of actions, features and outcomes, including:
• Skills and knowledge development, which might be through CPD, training courses, or qualifications. This enhances the mind and physical co-ordination.
• Encouraging knowledge and skills dissemination by experienced workers to less skilled and knowledgeable workers.
• Improving soil quality by reducing inputs of pesticides which depress and eliminate essential soil micro-organisms.
• Supporting and collaborating, in contrast to criticising and competing can improve well-being and also contribute to innovations that can be shared more equitably.
• Understand the externalised cost and impact of activities, aiming to improve the sustainability of maintenance practices.
• Internalise costs to improve the efficiency of activities, and don’t allow others to bear the costs, often from pollution and land degradation, of your activities.
• Develop a more balanced distribution of salary and benefits within an organisation, ensuring a narrower gap between highest and lowest paid workers.
• Ensure everyone is respected and well treated at work, with all work being carried out being recognised and appropriately rewarded.
• Rethink processes to reduce and minimise waste, ensuring each process element is a success.
• Challenge outcomes and expectations, questioning if inputs are providing appropriate and distinctive benefits. Is the outcome worth the extent of the inputs and can reduced inputs produce a very similar, albeit slightly lower, outcome, yet still be within the band of desirable values? For example, a sports pitch might be desired to be produced to a very high standard throughout an entire playing season. There isn’t a single value for what a very high standard is, but rather a range of values in which the pitch is to perform. So long as the pitch is within that range, albeit towards the lower end, then it is still achieving the desired outcome, yet will be less cost to produce and also with less resources being consumed. A common approach in modern grounds care is that of getting the highest quality possible, yet this ignores the concept of efficiency, resource consumption (and the environmental impacts of these) and also whether the product is fit for purpose by meeting the desired range value for the outcome.
• Co-operation and sharing with other clubs in the use of machinery and equipment, especially where a lot of turf care machinery is used only periodically and not on a daily basis. Having a small cluster of pitches which utilise the same machinery pool reduces the quantity of machinery needed overall. Effective planning and co-ordination are key requirements for this to succeed, but with a lot of machinery sitting around in storage sheds over time, the desire to have your own item of machinery is not a cost-effective or sustainable grounds care. It is an understandable situation to be able to call on your own equipment as and when it’s needed, but this almost selfish, rather than community type, approach to machinery purchase and use ties up much capital which could be better used in investing in human development.
• Enhancing the biodiversity of the surrounding environment in which a sports pitch is located.
• Reducing noise pollution will enhance the quality of worker experience as well as that of neighbours close to a sports pitch.
• Encouraging greater involvement with the local community to enhance relationships and support in the community, providing and enhancing a sense of belonging for a club.
• Encourage a diverse and empathetic workforce, to be able to better understand the diversity of opinions within society, helping to make a fairer and more equitable working environment.
• Embrace customer feedback to enhance the quality of the playing experience, using this as the main focus of outcomes, rather than a technical turfgrass centred outcome.
• Manage staffing resources as a long-term consideration, by providing appropriate career development routes within an organisation, and industry, to mirror ecological growth: young growth (new entrants into the workforce), maturation (competent, capable and continually improving worker skills and knowledge), through to senescence (which would be retirement, but also what opportunities could be provided to retain and utilise the experience of retirees – assuming they wish to continue to contribute to helping others).
• Increasing the effectiveness of decision making, by using decision support systems and a more complex systems approach to grounds management.
• Having a greater understanding and appreciation of longer-term consequences of actions: on the environment, pitch quality, user experience and enjoyment, and financial stability and viability.