Investing in training and building an on-dairy culture of community can make all the difference in a dairy’s success, according to Dr. Adrian Barragan, Extension Dairy Veterinarian with Penn State University.
Barragan shared his thoughts on dairy workforce management on a recent episode of The Dairy Podcast Show. He shared a current statistic that it costs approximately $150,000 to hire a dairy manager. Perhaps even more shocking, replacing an entry-level dairy worker costs nearly $100,000. “That’s not just their salary, but the time you spend searching, interviewing, processing the paperwork, and training that person,” he said. Thus, employee turnover is a huge, and sometimes unrecognized expense for dairies.
On average, it takes about 14 days to train a dairy worker with some farm background, and a month or more for someone with none. “In some ways, I think it can be an advantage to hire people with no background or unconscious bias,” he shared. “It may take longer to get them up to speed, but they are more likely to do the work exactly as you’ve shown them.”
Some advice from Barragan on effective dairy worker training includes:
- Keep it visual – Investing the time and effort into gathering excellent photos and videos will pay off for years to come, according to Barragan. Language and literacy skillsets vary among workers, and visual examples always add more depth to instructional content.
- Combine oral vs. hands-on – Most farm workers are not accustomed to sitting in a classroom. Barragan said a study he and his colleagues conducted showed that knowledge retention increased 25% when oral instruction was accompanied by hands-on tasks. “We need to make the instruction very visual and concise with clear messages. Then actually go out and do it,” he instructed.
- Brevity is best – Limit teaching periods to 30-45 minutes each. “It’s better to have 2 short sessions than 1 long one,” Barragan advised.
- Make language accommodations – More than half of dairy workers speak Spanish, and Barragan said there are more than 50 dialects within the Spanish language. Investing is translators is critical. Some dairies also have had success using simultaneous translation technology.
- Touch base regularly – It is unfair and unproductive to simply turn workers out with no feedback once they have been trained. Barragan recommended team meetings on the dairy at least once a month to check in with workers and inform them of happenings on the dairy. And be sure to bring positivity to those meetings. “Often what happens is that every time there’s a meeting, there’s something wrong. That brings a negative connotation to meetings,” Barragan advised. “A positive work environment is one of the most important factors in retaining people.”
That environment actually can cultivate a sense of community for dairy employees, because they spend so much time together, and may not have many ties in the larger community in which they live. Barragan said it needs to be someone’s defined role on the dairy to set goals and initiate plans for community-building, citing events like soccer tournaments, barbecues, holiday parties and more.
“It needs to be clear who will manage and champion those efforts,” he emphasized. “What are the steps, what is the budget, who’s in charge of making sure it gets done? It can be tedious at first, but after a while it becomes a natural part of the culture on the dairy.” He said even setting aside 1 hour a week to pull all the workers together to do something fun has tremendous value.
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