On a recent Sunday, I was listening to a Packers game on the radio while driving home from a family wedding. The radio feed was from the local Green Bay broadcast and included local commercials that are not usually broadcast on national coverage. One of the commercials that aired was from the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association and related specifically to ethanol and its impacts on feed prices.

When dairy farmers are asked how they recruit new employees, the response is usually the same: “We don’t need to recruit.” Owners report that the current economic situation has meant no shortage of people looking for work. In fact, many owners have a stack of applications, most of which will never receive a call back. This is not because there aren’t qualified applicants, and not because the owners don’t care, but simply because there aren’t enough jobs nor time to deal with each.

Are you using one of the best tools available on a dairy farm to solve potential problems and move the business forward? Are we talking about a new product? Service? Technology? Not in this article. Instead, we are focusing on a time-tested – and often underutilized – tool on the dairy: a properly run employee meeting.

Many of my dairy meetings, employee training and work-site audits involve some type of discussion about dairy workers’ wages, salaries or incentives. Often this question comes from dairy workers. In my opinion, it is because at a majority of dairy farms the rules about this topic are not clear, creating confusion and frustration for employees.