Labor Study Urges Early Engagement
Published: Friday, December 22, 2023
What's the secret to getting and retaining good farm employees? Five guest speakers at the Midwest Pork Conference in Lebanon, Ind. shared what they believe to be the answer on Dec. 5.
Carol Gstalder of Heart and Mind Strategies, and Erica Viar of Ascend Indiana recently conducted a study on agricultural labor shortages and the perceptions of youth considering agricultural careers. They shared their findings with pork producers. Speaking about retaining and educating current employees were Stacey Voight of PIC and Kalmbach verifier-trainer Pablo Salinas.
"The earlier the engagement, the better the payoff," Gstalder said, as she explained the scope of the workforce study.
The study showed the number of potential workers for the overall job market in the U.S. has dropped significantly from 2013, when there were 27.2 potential workers per job on average. In 2018 that number sank to 1.8 workers per job and in 2023 there are .8 potential workers for each job in the U.S.
However, more high schools are including work study among their graduation requirements, pushing an increasing amount of youths into the workforce and giving the agricultural industry the chance to recruit new workers.
Youths interested in pursuing, or intending to pursue, agricultural careers are often involved in programs such as 4-H, FFA, CTE courses, Young Farmers and Rancher, Agricultural Future of America, and other such organizations.
The study focused specifically on youth perspective on the agricultural industry and showed a wider pool of interest in young teens than in youths ages 16-18.
"Reach the talent younger, in middle school," Gstalder said. "Fourteen percent of youths consider ag in their top three job interests, but this skews younger, in the 13-15 age range. They show a stronger interest in working outdoors, individually and want to help things grow. There's also a stronger interest in no additional education, entrepreneurship and 2-year programs and apprenticeships."
A total of 10% of youths rejected any involvement in agricultural work. Many of the ag rejectors were ages 16-18 and female. They also intend to attend a 4-year college and eventually leave Indiana.
The majority of youths surveyed identified as neutral to the agriculture industry. The 66% were more likely to remain in their community, had stronger interest in jobs which allow them to work with tools and machines, wanted to work outdoors and help things grow. There is also a stronger interest in paths outside the traditional 4-year college, and about one-third of respondents identified with career images that relate to agriculture.
"How do we grow interest in the field and give them the resources they need to pursue that?" Viar asked. "Programmatic solutions are key in terms of creating specific skillsets."
She advises agricultural employers interested in utilizing young workers to invest in providing agricultural program opportunities. To retain current employees, Viar says the best practices include supporting employee career goals and creating a culture of growth and development.
She said encouraging career and technical education and using Catapult Indiana, a 160-hour paid training program, are two ways employers can support employees.
Gstalder encourages employers to utilize Work One, which assists in pre-employment screening and keeps records of labor market trends in several areas. Another program she highlighted was Earn Indiana, which is a work-and-earn assistive program. It pays up to 50% of wages for interns, and it is open to college and now high school students. Also qualifying are J1 Visa interns, TN Visa holders and others.
Voight said employee training is key not only to retaining employees but also to guaranteeing good animal welfare on the farm.
"Proper employee training contributes to good animal welfare," Voight said. "I ask every farm manager when I walk onto a farm, 'What's the most important thing on your farm?' What do they say? 'Gilts.' What do I want them to say? Employees."
If employee welfare is good and the onboarding training is effective, the animals will be taken care of and happy, and employees will be happy, too, she said.
"They won't get compassion fatigue," she said. "People constantly doing the same task over and over and over again, at some point they don't even care anymore."
An effective way to eliminate compassion fatigue is to cross train employees. But good training is key, Voight said.
"You don't just learn something and then you know it," she said.
"(GI Joe) would say, 'Knowing is half the battle.' Well, that's all wrong," Voight said. "Just knowing something one time, to read it, doesn't mean you know it. You have to put it into practice every day. You have to implement it a minimum of three weeks."
She encourages employers to implement effective, long-lasting employee training on the farm. This will result in the retention of employees, she said. But, if there is a lack of training, this creates a risk of employees giving the wrong dosage, using the wrong needle size or medicine, giving no treatment where it is needed and even sudden death of the animals.
Salinas ended the session with an explanation of the training process he created for Kalmbach. His position was created earlier this year to address employee training and retention. He got together with the managers of the top performing farms at the beginning of the year and created KSM90, a 90-day training program.
"The things that employees have to learn in the first 90 days that they're there. To make sure that everybody is a part of this, we broke it up into three different sections. Days zero to 30, we have a list of everything they have to know how to do. To make sure they're doing it, a farm manager has to check off on it," he said.
At first, the tasks are quick and simple, such as how to turn the power washer on or turn the heater on, but as it goes, it becomes more complex.
"We've actually been very successful with it, we've not lost very many employees this year. If we go back a year, we were losing sometimes up to 30 employees a year. This year, we're only at five, and some of those are people we've had to terminate for various reasons," Salinas said. "And animal welfare is at its best right now."
After the initial 90-day training, there are four other levels that keep employees training and learning, which gives them a chance to get a raise and eventually can step into a leadership role. The highest-level training includes skills such as basic welding, electrical work, plumbing and other such things. This helps increase biosecurity and cut down on the need for specialists.
Salinas also emphasized cross-training employees.
"By being able to give people training on both sides, just the performance this year—basically every single farm we have broken records in terms of how many pigs we got out the door," he said.
Performance is up so much, Salinas said, the farms operate smoothly even when they have employees on vacation. It also allows the employer to promote individuals from within who know the company culture, rather than having to hire someone unfamiliar with company expectations.
A theme in both these sessions is the earlier farmers begin teaching young talent about the industry operations, the more successfully they will recruit and keep future employees.
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