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Golf can be an important source of employment - particularly in rural settings, areas of degraded and marginal subsistence agriculture, and in areas which are tourism dependent but need to expand the tourist season.

However, concerns are often expressed that golf facilities and resorts fail to deliver long term, well-paid and skilled employment opportunities for local people, and post-construction, little long-term ripple effect into local businesses.  In short that they fail to live up to the economic multiplier predictions of their initial economic impact reports.

Best Management Practices

Employee Benefits

  • Career paths for local people
  • On-the-job training and professional development opportunities
  • Access to educational opportunities and flexibility over working hours to accommodate this
  • Health and social security benefits, possibly extended to the families of employees in certain contexts
  • A clean, comfortable and safe working environment
  • Equipment necessary to implement their duties safely and efficiently

This is important. The types of jobs that golf facilities and resorts create are fundamental to whether that business has a net positive or negative impact on local people's quality of life.

As part of the business plan for a golf facility, attention should be paid to key issues such as setting a target for the proportion of staff to come from local communities - broken down into construction and management phases, and varied across unskilled, semi-skilled and fully skilled jobs.