Engaged employees are more productive, safer, and more likely to stay longer at your dairy. Gallup, a research based management consulting firm, defines an engaged employee as “someone who works with passion and has profound connection to the company, driving results and moving the organization forward." In other words, engaged employees are those who show passion about their job and the dairy they work for, making them highly productive and efficient at work.

Durst phil
Phil Durst
Senior Extension Dairy Educator / Michigan State University Extension


Gallup’s statistics say that highly engaged employees can improve overall performance by 78 percent! Furthermore, engaged employees can improve:

  • Employee retention by 44 percent
  • Labor safety by 50 percent
  • Productivity by 50 percent
  • Profitability by 33 percent

So, are your employees highly engaged or not?

If they are good for you! If they are not, I suggest starting by looking at your leadership and communication skills. We all recognize that good communication is critical for effective teamwork on the farm or in any business. Not only do we recognize that, but we often say that it is a priority for us. And yet, it is still a problem area for many.

As manager, you tend to assume that others understand what you want. You think that they give the same urgency to tasks as you will. You believe that they will have the same standards for how the job gets done that you have. But, unfortunately many times this is not the case.

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You probably aren’t the only one with questions and misconceptions. Many employees don’t know much of the business of the farm, what your goals are as an owner or how they are doing compared to your expectations. The primary reason they don’t know it is because many owners don’t do a good job sharing that information.

That’s where many owners get stuck. They recognize the importance of good communication and engaged employees, but aren’t sure what to do differently. Meanwhile, many employees seem adrift. They may not contribute much beyond doing the minimum and aren’t active participants in advancing the operation to a new level.

So what can you do to have highly engaged employees? Here are five things that you must have:

  1. Strong leadership and communication
  2. Well defined job roles and organizational structure
  3. Effective performance management system
  4. A well defined recruitment and orientation process for new employees
  5. A good training and development program

Employee surveys and evaluations can be now done with dairy farm employees that can help make assessments of the level of engagement of your employees.

MSU Extension is initiating a project along with APN Consulting, LLC to improve communication on the farm. This project is supported with funding provided by the North Central Center for Risk Management Education and the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

To participate, a dairy must have at least five employees. The project personnel will meet with the owner and evaluate his or her perception of employee satisfaction and engagement. A survey has been developed which the farm’s employees will take via phone interview, either in English or in Spanish.

A summary of those responses will be prepared and the project personnel will sit down with the owners to review this and determine what can be done to improve communication and engagement on the farm.

In order for this to be successful, employees must feel supported in calling and that their responses are completely anonymous. In fact, the name of the employee will not even be asked. No identifying information will be revealed.

Dairy producers in Michigan and eastern U.S. are invited to participate in this project. If you are interested in learning more about this, contact any of the project leaders:

Improvement is possible but it begins with increased knowledge. This project can help you change employee management based on understanding what your employees are thinking. PD

Felix Soriano, owner, APN Consulting, LLC
Phil Durst, senior dairy educator, MSU Extension