Think about what makes a business successful, whether that be a farm business, agriservice business or Fortune 500 company. What did you think about?
My answer would be that a successful business develops and optimally uses all their resources – material resources and people resources.
For farm businesses, the material resources include land for crops, buildings, machinery and livestock. Farms are great with these resources. They are continually improving the fertility of the soil, maintaining and upgrading buildings/machinery, and improving genetics and feeding strategies for livestock.
However, farms in general are not so great at managing people as well as they could. Research has found that farms spend proportionally less on training and development than almost all other industries. I am part of a research project investigating the opportunities and challenges of internal promotion to supervisor. We are having trouble finding farm supervisors who have been promoted from entry positions. Contrast this with companies like McDonalds and Walmart where most supervisors have been developed and internally promoted.
Below, we look at four ways your farm can become great at developing and promoting your people. This development is much more than sending employees to educational meetings. We start with the least formal, most frequent and move toward the more formal, one-time events.
Excellent daily supervision
Role models are one of the ways we all learn and become inspired. Employee development begins by having excellent supervisors and supervision. We look at three attributes of great supervision:
- Clarity. Great supervision starts with providing clarity. Clarity begins with continual reinforcement of why the farm exists – mission, vision, values – to provide the motivation to excel and advance. Setting clear expectations for behavior and performance is crucial. Clear, challenging but attainable goals provide focus and motivation.
- Listening. Employees who feel listened to are more motivated, engaged and have greater trust with their supervisor. Pausing before responding shows you are interested in what the employee is saying and gives you time for a thoughtful response.
- Asking questions. When an employee comes to you with a concern or an idea, he or she rarely shares all the details initially. If you respond at this point without all the information, your answer will likely not be ideal. The alternative is to seek complete information by asking “tell me more” or “and what else.” Once you have all the information, you will likely want to provide your solution, but that would be a missed teaching opportunity. By asking employees to share their solutions to a situation, you are teaching them to be better decision-makers. Even if the employees do not have an answer, they have taken time to think about it. Next time, they may have an answer.
A performance improvement system
Exceptional individual and team performance is the key responsibility of a supervisor. Excelling and learning the required system will prepare employees to advance. The system has two critical components. The first is a set of clear, challenging short-term performance expectations. These expectations relate to the specific responsibilities of the position.
The second component is to provide feedback to enable employees to master their tasks and meet and exceed the established expectations. Positive feedback builds confidence and increases motivation to continue to succeed. Redirection feedback provides the employee with the improvement information needed to excel and master tasks and responsibilities. Negative feedback – rarely needed with great supervision – is also designed to enable the employee to succeed.
For this system to succeed, the supervisor must make performance feedback a priority in two ways, first by providing informal, continuous feedback, allowing employees to continue to evaluate and improve performance. A second more structured but still informal and collegial format should be a frequent structured meeting to assist in assessing performance and resetting performance expectations; monthly is a common meeting cadence.
Continuous improvement structures
There are many ways a farm business can signal to their workforce that learning is important and advancement is possible. We look at three:
- Rework annual reviews. With the feedback provided in the performance improvement system, the traditional review is now redundant and unneeded. As a substitute, I recommend a stay meeting. This meeting has a forward-looking orientation focusing on addressing employee concerns, identifying new responsibilities in current positions (horizontal promotion) and discussing potential advancement opportunities. A key focus is retention of employees (thus the title) and enabling employees to view the farm as their career.
- Provide learning opportunities. Including learning activities or presentations in leadership team, staff and production team meetings both enhances performance and sends a continuous improvement message. Perhaps at every other meeting, a learning segment is included with a video to watch and discuss, a team member sharing knowledge or an outside expert presenting in person or via video conference.
- Provide learning materials. Budgeting a specified sum for each employee to use for magazine subscriptions, books, online webinars/courses and programs/conferences encourages employees to take their progress into their own hands.
Structured learning
With the internet and a myriad of organizations offering courses relevant to farm employees, the challenge is to make learning a priority and choosing the best options. I am a strong advocate for having a learning/professional development plan rather than simply deciding what to teach each time a learning opportunity appears. Here are some of my suggestions:
- I highly recommend Cornell Agricultural Workforce Supervisory Leadership certificate programs. The courses are designed for aspiring, new and experienced supervisors.
- Look online for materials including videos and subscriptions. I have several short videos on YouTube. There are numerous free supervision/learning newsletters – one I like is by Bryan Williams.
- Most state extension programs include supervision and leadership.
- Most colleges, including junior colleges, offer certificate and for-credit programs. (These likely will not be agriculture specific.) Programs that focus on family and small businesses will be most relevant.
A final thought
Today, we face hiring challenges and the increasing need for skilled employees. Just as you develop your own land, machinery, buildings and livestock, think about developing your workforce and promoting from within.
