“Onboarding dairy farm employees: Improving the new employee experience.” Journal of Dairy Science Vol. 108 No. 4, 2025. This article from researchers at Cornell University describes a project that involved an educational intervention to increase the use of new employee onboarding practices in dairy farms. The effects were analyzed at different levels: (1) levels of onboarding practice use, (2) manager perceptions of employee performance, (3) manager satisfaction with the onboarding program, (4) manager concerns about compliance with state and federal employment regulations, and (5) employee turnover. Onboarding advisers (educators and consultants) provided templates, examples and intensive facilitation directly with farm managers to learn and adopt onboarding practices. A total of 36 dairy farms participated in the onboarding project, and 17 provided a complete set of data from before and after the intervention.
The authors provide some context to the project, indicating that as dairy farms increase in size, they become more complex organizations and their reliance on employee labour grows. At the same time, labour quality and availability pose critical management challenges for dairy operators. Integrating new employees into the business is an important human resources management (HRM) function, yet dairy farms face numerous challenges to facilitating new employee adjustment. Onboarding is the dairy farm employer’s opportunity to directly shape new employees’ first experiences with the farm and establish training and other HRM standards that will help them adapt to their new role. Onboarding can be organized around the 4 C’s: compliance, clarification, culture and connection. Compliance refers to teaching employees basic rules, policies and regulations pertaining to the workplace. Clarification encompasses actions taken to help a new employee understand their role within the business and the performance expectations associated with that role. Culture comprises the values, philosophies, traditions and social norms found in the workplace. Connection refers to interpersonal relationships and a new employee’s sense of belonging in the workplace. The authors say that most organizations put some effort toward the compliance and clarification levels of onboarding, but relatively few organizations systematically address all 4 C’s.
Farm managers often assume the role of human resource manager by default, despite lacking formal training in how to orient and train new employees. As dairy farms grow, middle managers are expected to gain increasing responsibility for HRM functions, although they may not have the necessary skills. Also, many dairies lack robust employee recruitment and selection processes, which can lead to a mismatch between new employee skills and their job requirements. They recognize the importance of training new employees, yet they often delegate that task to other employees. New dairy employees may be assigned to shadow co-workers, who may not be able or motivated to train correctly. All this can lead to inconsistent training, reduced milk quality, poor employee knowledge of farm goals and poor regulatory noncompliance.
Another aspect mentioned in the article is that despite the importance of safety training for dairy workers, that training is not always provided to new employees. Employee turnover is also a major concern for dairy managers, and managing turnover is critical to a dairy farm’s competitive advantage because employees possess much of the knowledge and skill needed to operate the farm. The costs of turnover can be high, including expenses related to recruitment, selection, hiring and training of a replacement employee, lost productivity before and after the turnover event, and safety issues related to a new employee.
Recognizing the potential for employee onboarding to improve performance and retention, the authors designed an educational program to assist dairy farm employers with developing their own farm-specific onboarding program for new employees. The goal of this onboarding project was to help dairy farm employees be safe, productive and engaged from day one of their new employment. A closely related goal was for farm employers to become more professional in their HRM practices and fully compliant with existing state and federal employment regulations.
After the project, dairy farms reported a greater intensity of effort devoted to onboarding at the clarity and compliance levels. Moreover, dairy farm managers used more recommended HRM practices and reported higher levels of satisfaction with onboarding. They reported a reduction in turnover post-intervention, but it was not significant. Of 23 recommended onboarding practices (things like “Share company mission or vision with new employees,” “Provide planned safety training to new employees on the first day of work,” “Train employees about what to do if they think there is an error in their pay”), dairy managers reported tripling their adoption of mission statements, first-day safety training and sharing job descriptions, whereas adoption of five other practices more than doubled. The approach used in this project is adaptable to dairies across the industry with the potential to enhance onboarding programs and drive adoption of other HRM improvements.
“Perceived barriers to implementation of biosecurity best management practices for control of Salmonella Dublin on dairy farms: A focus group study.” Journal of Dairy Science Vol. 108 No. 5, 2025. This article from researchers from the Universities of Guelph and PEI, describes a study where the objective was to understand dairy farmers’ awareness, perceptions and barriers to implementation of established biosecurity best management practices for control of Salmonella Dublin (S. Dublin). In total, 28 dairy farmers participated in five focus groups from two regions of Ontario. Four themes were developed from the data: (1) informational preparedness, (2) structural factors that influence disease mitigation, (3) motivational drivers of disease mitigation and (4) shifts in biosecurity engagement.
The authors provide some background information about the impact of salmonella in cattle, indicating that Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica serovar Dublin is a bacterium that commonly affects cattle and is a pathogen of concern for international dairy industries. Research has shown the introduction of purchased animals or having at least one animal temporarily leave the farm and return are associated with S. Dublin herd-level positivity. Young calves are particularly susceptible to infection with S. Dublin and can experience high rates of respiratory disease and mortality. Furthermore, animals that recover from the disease may intermittently shed the bacteria and serve as a reservoir of endemic infection in herds. The potential for zoonotic transmission (transmission from animals to humans) and increasing occurrence of antibiotic-resistant strains further underscores the importance for human and animal health to control the spread of S. Dublin. The authors refer to statistics that indicate that S. Dublin is emerging as a pathogen of concern on Canadian dairy farms. The herd-level prevalence in British Columbia was 30%, whereas 15.5%, 6.8% and 5.1% of herds tested were positive in Alberta, Quebec and Ontario, respectively. They also refer that although national standards for dairy farm biosecurity outline animal health management, animal additions and movement, management and sanitation, and off-farm personnel access, Canada does not have a mandated control program for S. Dublin.
There are internal and external challenges to implementation of biosecurity best management practices on dairy farms. Both internal (e.g., desire to improve, risk perception) and external (e.g., financial incentives or penalties, availability of labour or other resources) motivations combine to determine whether biosecurity best management practices are adopted by individual dairy producers. The authors say that the challenges for implementation of biosecurity best management practices to control S. Dublin on Canadian dairy farms have not been explored.
The study demonstrated that participants’ perceived awareness and preparedness for an outbreak of S. Dublin on their farm was variable. Although most participating farmers were aware of the pathogen, most were not concerned about their farm becoming infected and stated that their farm was not prepared to handle an outbreak. Participants who had not experienced an S. Dublin outbreak did not view the pathogen as a substantial risk to their farm. Participants who had experienced an S. Dublin outbreak expressed a shift in their perspective toward biosecurity (proactive rather than complacent) and risk management (e.g., wanting to limit spread to other farms). The study suggested that participants expected producer organizations, government and academia to provide more support and develop strategies to mitigate the spread of S. Dublin. Participants did not view S. Dublin as a substantial risk to their farm. Therefore, until their perceived risk increases, the motivation to overcome extrinsic and intrinsic barriers to adopt biosecurity best management practices to control the spread of S. Dublin will likely remain low.
This column brings you information regarding some of the research being done around the world and published in the Journal of Dairy Science. The objective is to bring to light areas of research that may have an immediate practical application on a dairy farm, as well as research that, even though it may not have a practical impact now, could be interesting for its future potential application. The idea is to give a brief overview of select research studies but not go into detail on each topic. Those interested in further in-depth reading can use the citations to find each study.
