One of the biggest differences between farmers who struggle to be progressive and make changes and those who possess the agility to tackle change boils down to structure and clarity.

In this episode of the Progressive Dairy Podcast, host Kimmi Devaney visits with Kansas dairy producer Lee Holtmeier from Linn Willow Creek Dairy about their employee culture, what they do to mentor and empower employees, and how they keep employee turnover low. 

“The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.” Since this quote is from Henry Ford, it is approximately a century old. If this was true for his assembly line workers, it certainly is even more true today.

Here is an unarguable fact: A high-functioning and effective farm team – with all team members in alignment and focused on achieving established farm goals – has a distinct competitive advantage over a farm that operates without a team.

Your farm can exceed all the industry benchmarks for production, but if someone is severely injured, those production benchmarks are suddenly not important. Effective leaders incorporate building and maintaining a safety culture into their farm management strategy.

“Onboarding" refers to the process in which new hires are integrated into the organization.

The program provides tools and resources to dairy owners and managers to help them identify strengths and opportunities related to employee engagement and build a plan to address and improve weaknesses.

“The process of ensuring the new employee has a great start, becomes engaged and stays is called onboarding.” Onboarding is more than just the orientation and training that have traditionally been our focus for new employees.

“When we talk about raising a dairy replacement heifer, it’s going to ultimately make a milk cow,” said John Robison, a consultant at JDR Livestock Consulting Management Services, during a session of the 2023 Dairy Calf and Heifer Association annual meeting.

The secret to this dairy’s success lies in their communication with one another.