It turns out that dairy owners may be seriously underestimating their employees.Those who believe workers simply show up and put in their hours, but have no interest in why they are trained to do things a certain way or what impact their job has on the farm's overall success, are in for a surprise.
Speaking at last week's National Mastitis Council annual meeting in Glendale, Ariz., Michigan State University professor and Quality Milk Alliance program member Ron Erskine, DVM (seen here) shared recent interview results showing dairy employees are eager to learn more about what they do and why it is important.
The individual telephone interviews revealed that Spanish-speaking employees feel they receive less training about the "why" part of their jobs than English-speaking workers do, and they want to learn more.
The key question in the interviews was: "How would you rate your interest in learning?" Replies were given on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being "I already know enough to do my job" and 5 being "I am interested in the dairy and want to keep learning."
In separate interviews, dairy owners/managers were asked to predict what their employees' response would be – which they seriously underestimated.
Replies on the 1 to 5 scale by 16 owners/managers averaged a mediocre 3.35, while replies by 139 employees averaged a huge 4.72.
That wide disconnect, said Erskine, doesn't only mean that employees want more training and understanding about what they do. It also means dairy owners are missing out on more and better performance. He stressed that the goal should always be employees who are engaged in what they do, no matter what the job is, because engaged employees do better work and their turnover is lower.
(c) Hoard's Dairyman Intel 2016
February 15, 2016
