The Who – Where to start hiring on the family farm?

How long before universities implement a human resource program into an agriculture degree? 

Before you say “I don’t have employees”, remember that family farms often have the largest human resource issues. 

Whether communication, compensation, succession or the numerous other “people” issues that family farms face, they are the most critical human resource issues. Employees you can fire, ever tried firing a family member?

Here are my thoughts on hiring and roles that farms have seen as crucial and successful in their growth phases. This is a list from small family-run operations to large consolidated growing enterprises that I’ve worked with over the years.

So, who should I hire first?

Executive Assistant

These are the individuals that often make the largest difference in the early phases. Think about how much time is spent opening the mail, categorizing the bills, writing cheques, and bookkeeping. 

Who pulls your inventory off the grain carts, or writes it on the whiteboard of what bins have what commodities? 

Not to mention the other tasks of emails, banking records, filling out forms, or just being the first point of contact. Often overlooked, but worth their weight in gold.

Many producers have made this first hire a priority. 

Whether you find a bank teller in town, a retired school teacher, or even somebody stocking shelves at the grocery store, these are all individuals that can be trained. Often part-time or at a lower compensation rate than operators this person can open up numerous hours of your day. If at the very least they take away tasks that you leave to nighttime in the house when you want to be spending time with your family. In our case, this hire turned into our controller, a manager, and an integral part of our entire team at the farm.

Operator

The days of hiring the lowest-value labour and putting them on the highest-value machines are over. The phrase “you get what you pay for” has become real when you are spending $1.5M on a combine or $2.5M on your seeding outfits. 

Most farms I work with have gotten over the ‘labour is a cost argument and found investment in people that are quality employees. Even though today’s technology has made operating one of the easiest jobs in the fleet, it also requires longer hours and often busy times away from their families which adds a new type of human resource process.

The joy of today’s world is that I can now review the efficiencies and abilities of operators. In the past, Joe from down the road was a really good drill driver. 

Today, I can tell you that combine operator 6 was 20% less efficient and cost the team 330 hours over the 40 days of harvest. See the difference? 

The other niche is that you one day hope that through growth these individuals may take on responsibilities outside of operating. In fact, most farms I work with hire other specialties and then during the busy season make them operators. Hire somebody for a harder role, and utilize them when needed.

Specialist

Today’s farms are not looking for average employees, they are looking for somebody to take on roles and responsibilities outside of their own capabilities. Some of the most sought-after employees in growing operations are mechanics, human resource managers, agronomists, and even IT. 

Farms realize that downtime in the field is detrimental and that shop labour rates at the local dealership are ludicrous, so it has become less costly to just have somebody on staff. This may change as technology takes away one’s ability to fix machinery, but for now, a good mechanic is worth its weight in gold when your combine is down two days into harvest.

The most asked-about employee on our farm is Jeff, our Chief Operating Officer. As mentioned before, human resources on farms is mediocre at best and having an expert who has experience and knowledge from other industries has made a significant difference. 

Going from running 100+ unionized employees to a team of 30 on the farm is a much easier and more controllable task, even though I still wouldn’t want the job. Managing people will be the hardest skill to master on the farm, so maybe let somebody else run the show.

I don’t want to go through the laundry list of employees that are on our wish list, and the wish list of many of our clients, but it is vast. Headhunting is now a hiring process as waiting for somebody to show up or using the local paper is a waste of time. 

Hire slow and fire fast is the process we teach as a bad employee can kill a culture, so buyer beware. And lastly, remember the line that I have grown to love:

“Managing people would be easy, if not for the people”.