UK & Ireland Clubs: When the season turns and the team thins out, does your standard hold?

As the season winds down, most UK and Irish clubs lose the layer of people who carried the busy months. The students behind the bar, the casual food and beverage and events staff who ran the weddings and society days, the extra hands in the kitchen and the halfway house, they head back to college or move on to the next thing. The clubs that hold their standard through this are not the ones who kept the most people. They are the ones whose standard lives in a shared system rather than in the heads of the summer team that has just left. And with the permanent team already stretched thin, there is little spare capacity to quietly absorb the gap. If your service, your checks and your safety routines depend on who happens to be on shift, September is when it shows.

Why does September stretch UK and Irish clubs?

Summer is when a club leans hardest on seasonal people. Weddings, society days, open competitions, visitor golf and a busy bar and restaurant all need more hands than the permanent team can provide, and a good share of those hands are students, part-timers and casual staff taken on for the season. Come September, term starts, the events diary quietens, and that layer melts away almost overnight.

The permanent team left behind is leaner than most members realise, and it cannot simply pick up the slack. The GCMA reports that recruitment and retention remain a real challenge across clubs, with above-inflation rises in the National Living Wage squeezing club finances at the same time. On the course, BIGGA’s Workforce and Facilities Survey found 72% of clubs say they do not have enough greenkeepers, with the average team around six and seasonal cover cut back to roughly one per club. The greenkeeping team is not going anywhere, but it is fully committed to the heaviest technical work of the year, renovation, coring and overseeding, exactly as the summer support elsewhere in the club disappears.

That is the real September squeeze. Not a dramatic exodus, but the quiet loss of the people who, between them, knew how things were done.

What actually walks out when your summer staff leave?

In a bar, a kitchen or an events operation, the standard rarely lives on paper. It lives in the routines of the people doing the work. The seasonal supervisor who knew the allergen checks by heart, the student who always logged the cellar temperatures, the casual member of the events team who knew how the marquee got signed off. Much of that is picked up on the job, learned by watching someone who has since left, and it walks out of the door with them.

Our own research shows how widely this is felt. In Obbi’s Club Safety & Compliance Report 2024/25, produced with the GCMA, CMAE, CMAI, CMAE Scotland, Gallagher, UK Golf Federation and Fieldfisher, one club manager summed the problem up plainly: they have a lot of temporary staff, and it is troublesome to keep record of their safety and compliance. Another pointed to the same gap, saying it is difficult to get all staff to attend training, especially shift workers. The numbers behind those comments are just as telling. Nearly two thirds of clubs (64%) deliver training in-house through managers, and a third rely on new starters shadowing colleagues, so when the trainer or the experienced hand leaves, the method goes too. Over a third (37%) still keep their records in a paper filing cabinet, and only around one in five use a dedicated system. Little wonder that 72% of clubs believe at least some of their checks, certificates or training are not always fully up to date. When your summer team leaves, that is the knowledge and the proof going with them.

The real risk is not a quieter bar. It is a standard that resets each season.

A quieter autumn diary is manageable. A standard that has to be rebuilt from memory every time the seasonal team changes is a liability, and it does not pause for casual or part-time staff. Your duty of care covers everyone on shift, whether they have been with you ten years or ten days, yet only 20% of clubs say everyone on their committee or board is fully aware of that legal duty, and more than a quarter say very few are.

The obligations do not soften either. Allergen information still has to be right on every plate. Kitchen and cellar temperatures still need logging. Fire checks, first aid, licensing conditions, COSHH storage and RIDDOR reporting all still apply, regardless of who is holding the fort. If the HSE in Great Britain or the HSA in Ireland ever looks at your club, or an insurer reviews a claim, the question is not only what happened but what oversight was in place. In insurance and legal terms, if it was not recorded, it did not happen. A brilliantly run summer counts for very little if the proof left with the temporary staff who ran it, and in our research two thirds of clubs (67%) had already had an incident or accident in the last two years that could lead to a claim. The exposure is wider than your own team, too: 87% of clubs are not confident that their outsourced services, such as catering or the pro shop, have their checks and training fully up to date.

How do the best clubs hold the standard through the change?

The clubs that come through the seasonal handover without their standard slipping tend to do the same four things. None of them needs a bigger team.

1. Give everyone one baseline to start from. Build a single, short induction, no longer than twenty to thirty minutes, covering emergency procedures, reporting, allergens and the basics of the role. It matters, because nearly four in ten clubs ran only two or fewer training sessions in the last year, inductions included. When every seasonal starter begins from the same baseline, the standard does not reset when the faces change.

2. Agree the handful of checks that matter most. Most clubs do not need more paperwork. They need clarity on the things that most protect the club: allergen and kitchen temperature checks, cellar management, fire and first aid, COSHH storage, licensing conditions, lone working and buggy checks. Name them, simplify them, and put them in one place so anyone on shift can carry them out and anyone in charge can see they were done.

3. Let the proof build itself. The strongest position is one where the evidence of a held standard comes out of the everyday work, not a scramble before an inspection. When a check is completed on a phone and timestamped against the person who did it, you are no longer relying on memory or a filing cabinet. The record becomes a by-product of the job getting done.

4. Give leadership one live view. Committees, general managers and heads of department do not just want to hear that things are fine. They want to see what is complete, what is overdue and where risk is building, week to week rather than once a season. One live view across the course, the clubhouse and the kitchen is what turns a nervous handover into a calm one.

This is the gap we built Obbi to close for clubs across the UK and Ireland. It takes the standard out of people’s heads and off paper and puts it into one live system, so the proof builds itself from the work the team already does, and the bar you set stays the bar your club holds, whoever is on shift.

Where to start before the season winds down

You do not need to solve all of this before the last society day. Pick the one thing that would hurt most if the person who owns it left tomorrow, and write it down where the next person can find it. Then do the same for the next. A standard that lives in a system rather than in a season is what lets you keep your service, your safety and your reputation steady, even as the summer team moves on.

Because the clubs that hold their standard through September are not the ones who kept everyone. They are the ones whose standard never depended on keeping them.

Sources:

• Obbi Club Safety & Compliance Report 2024/25, produced with the GCMA, CMAE, CMAI, SGCMA, Gallagher, Fieldfisher and the UK Golf Federation. obbi.club
• BIGGA Workforce & Facilities Survey (2024), in partnership with the GCMA, Scottish Golf, England Golf and Wales Golf. bigga.org.uk
• Committee for Golf Club Salaries, 2025 Salary Recommendations, GCMA. gcma.org.uk

Frequently asked questions

Why do UK and Irish golf clubs lose staff in September?

September is when the wider club’s summer layer moves on. Weddings, society days, visitor golf and a busy bar and restaurant are staffed through summer with students, part-timers and casual hires, and when term starts and the events diary quietens, that layer goes almost overnight. The permanent team that remains is already lean, so there is little slack to absorb the gap.

How can a club keep standards consistent with seasonal bar and events staff?

Keep the standard in a shared system rather than in the heads of the people who leave. Give every seasonal starter one short induction covering emergencies, reporting and allergens; agree the handful of checks that matter most and put them in one place; capture proof of each check as it is done; and give leadership one live view of what is complete and what is overdue. When everyone starts from the same baseline, the standard does not reset when the faces change.

Does a club’s duty of care apply to casual and part-time staff?

Yes. A club’s duty of care covers everyone on shift, whether they have been there ten years or ten days, and it does not lessen for seasonal or casual workers. Allergen information, kitchen and cellar temperatures, fire, first aid, COSHH and RIDDOR obligations all still apply. In a claim or an HSE or HSA inspection, the question is what oversight was in place, and if a check was not recorded it is treated as not done.

What is the biggest compliance risk when seasonal staff leave?

Losing the proof. Much of a club’s standard is learned on the job and lives in people’s routines, so when the summer team goes the record of how things were done can go with them. In Obbi’s 2024/25 research, 72% of clubs said at least some of their checks, certificates or training were not always fully up to date, and two thirds had already had an incident that could lead to a claim. A held standard is only worth what you can evidence.