Good Help Is Hard To Find

While an unemployment rate below 5 percent is good news for much of the country’s economy, golf courses will once again struggle this summer to find and retain good seasonal employees. What was traditionally considered a plum job for high school and college students is being shunned for more attractive opportunities in the service industries, where similar wages can be earned in an air-conditioned facility and the workday does not begin before dawn.

“Lots of people don’t want to be at work at 6 a.m. and work on weekends,” says David Fearis, in his 16th year as superintendent of Blue Hills Country Club in Kansas City, Mo. “We just ran an ad and found four people we thought were pretty good. Already, three of them are gone.”

As a result, superintendents are forced to raise the payroll portion of their already squeezed budgets to recruit seasonal workers, especially in metropolitan areas. Only a few years ago these same courses could fill their crews with summer help hired at the minimum wage. It is not uncommon to find courses now offering $8.50 or more an hour - about 65 percent above the minimum wage of $5.15 - just to get candidates to fill out job applications. In some cases, superintendents are losing workers to landscape businesses that offer $10 per hour or more.

“Labor is the biggest part of our budgets,” says Tim Kelly, superintendent at Village Links of Glen Ellyn in Chicago. “Those are the people who make us look good, so we have to work hard to keep them.”

Kelly’s situation is typical. He has a crew of 28 at the season’s peak and uses an assortment of incentives to bolster compensation. They begin with “bonus” hours awarded for a job well done, or $15 in additional pay for working both days of a weekend.

Free lunches are part of an employee-of-the-month program leading to an employee-of-the-year award. Many of the cash extras are paid only to those who remain through the end of August because it’s so hard to find and train replacements late in the season.

Superintendents are increasingly looking for employees in areas they never explored before. Fearis wrote letters to high school golf coaches and guidance counselors to recruit promising youngsters. Others are tapping into a growing pool of semi-retired workers. These workers are highly sought because of their strong work ethic and the extra care they tend to exhibit when operating equipment like a $35,000 mower for fairways or rough.

To compliment the seasonal staff, though, superintendents must find a few strong, skilled candidates who are willing to work 45 hours per week or more for six to nine months without an extended vacation. This backbone of any full-size crew handles demanding maintenance practices, such as aerating and overseeding, at both ends of the growing season. Among the best candidates for these jobs are turfgrass student interns.

“We began an intern program and we have two or three of them each summer,” Fearis says. “We rented an apartment for them to help them out.”

The tight labor pool is also shifting the composition of many crews. During the early 1980s, Kelly notes, his municipal course began relying more on core workers than summer hires to provide the increased quality players expected throughout the year. Delivering such quality requires a dedicated staff with a wealth of experience. “It used to be that two workers using nine-gang mowers could mow the fairways in four hours,” Kelly explains. “Now it takes four [smaller] mowers and five hours.”

Kelly, who became superintendent at Glen Ellyn’s course in 1974, knows the value of working on a grounds crew as a youngster. He began working at the facility in the 1960s, earning $1.50 an hour. When his temporary assignment in the clubhouse was finished, his supervisor shifted him outside. “I guess,” he laughs, “it’s the summer job that has never stopped.”

But it’s a job that, for the time being, is increasingly more difficult to fill.

- Paul Vermeulen