Simple steps to avoid staffing headaches
Dairy farmer Stuart Taylor has simple criteria for selecting his staff. ‘‘They need to be good, productive people. It’s no good being a good person but doing nothing and it’s no good being really productive if you’re not a good person.’’
Speaking at DairyNZ’s People Expo in Stratford on Wednesday, Taylor said farm owners and employers could avoid staffing headaches by getting expert help to find those good, productive people.
‘‘We get experts in to talk to us about grass and cows, which we know plenty about, but we don’t get anyone in to talk to us about the things we know nothing about – like people,’’ he said.
Taylor, who grew up on a dairy farm in Northland, is now owneroperator of a 3000-cow operation west of Bulls.
‘‘Dairy farming when I grew up was about people working together, helping each other look after the cows, and the growth path was through hard work, sharemilking and then farm ownership,’’ he said.
‘‘When I started to employ people, I thought I could make anyone into a dairy farmer but I was wrong.
‘‘I realised I was hiring young people to make them fit into my system, rather than running a system that fitted around the people I could have.’’
Taylor’s farm employs 30 staff and he believes dairy farmers could have better people generating better results by offering better working conditions and salaries.
‘‘I had to change the way I thought about what I could offer people,’’ he said.
Taylor now made a point of offering flexibility to his employees, as well as a professional environment where they were respected and valued.
‘‘Employees know that what they do is important and part of a bigger picture and they get fairly paid for the work they do,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s a competitive market so to attract the right people, we set an hourly rate for young people so they would know what they would be earning. We also set the roster to five-on, two-off, rather than 19-on, three-off, which it had been sometimes.’’
Speaking from personal experience, Taylor said the good working conditions should attract the right applicants but there were times when employers could find themselves at a bit of a loss. In those cases, it was important not to make snap decisions, he said.
‘‘If you’re not getting the applicants you’d like, look at your community. Is there a good, productive person you can bring in short-term? You’re better to bring someone in on a secondment than get the wrong person long term.’’
Once someone had been employed, it was difficult to remove them from the farm team, he said.
‘‘And once they’re gone, you’re left with the repercussions of having had them there in the first place. It does damage to the culture and you can lose some of your good people in the process because they’re worn down and fed up.
‘‘Keeping your team culture strong goes a long way towards keeping your farm and your business running well.’’