A Consultant with the HR Basics says taking steps to ensure employees feel they are valued members of the team will go a long way to keeping turn over low on the farm.
One of the biggest challenges facing the pork sector today is recruiting and retaining dependable qualified workers.
Janice Goldsborough, a Consultant with the HR Basics, says finding and hiring the right workers is a time consuming and costly process, so once you have those people, you want them to stay long term.
Recruitment costs money. You want to be able to keep them. Therefore doing things like delegating, empowering them. Give them a task, trust they’re gong to do it. If they have questions, hopefully they’ll ask. If they do it wrong, we all make mistakes, nobody’s perfect so if they make a mistake, you show them the right way and let them do it again. Also, having good employee relations, talking to your employees. How are things going? Being respectful to one another, having good policies that are clear, that are done consistently for everybody and just making sure that communication is open, that it’s two way and that people aren’t scared to bring issues, that they’re asked for their ideas. Have regular staff meetings, offer some incentives and it doesn’t have to be monetary. It can be as simple as having a group barbecue or going out bowling one night or something like that, something that makes people feel they’re part of the team.
Janice Goldsborough-the HR Basics
Goldsborough says we know there are positions throughout agriculture, both on the farm and in the processing plants, that are going unfilled so the retention factor is huge. She says when you find good people you want to keep them because if you do lose them it’s going to be hard to find new ones to replace them.
