The author is a freelance writer based in Rockford, Ill.
Farming is flexibility,” said Swisslane Farms human resources (HR) lead Annie Link on an episode of Michigan State University Extension’s “Virtual Coffee Break” podcast. “You have to be ready to move on the fly. A lot of farmers love that, but it’s contradictoryx to what an employee needs.”
The conversation highlighted Link’s experience with finding surefire ways to tackle workforce management while paying heed to the farm’s big picture needs. The secret? Attention to new labor recruitment.
“If you go off process for cows, there will be a problem. Why would it be any different for people?” Link said. “What you’re doing on a farm is managing people in order to manage cows.”
Cows don’t hold exclusive superiority to their caretakers (well, not on paper), but in the dairy business, it’s true that the cow is queen. Link’s observation, then, speaks to a perhaps mildly overlooked (but no less necessary) operation particular: the person. And to optimize the person, one first must find the person.
This is where the importance of recruitment comes in.
Who you hire matters
Link was quick to both admit to her management greenness and define her work with employees as “mission-minded — a way to encourage people to be better than they were yesterday and to provide them with the resources for how to get there.”
In this way, she sees herself as a “chief people officer,” living out her calling to work with others. But whether interpersonal relations come easily to you or are as foreign as reindeer cheese, finding and keeping the right people is a challenge.
Given the long-standing labor shortage plaguing nearly every industry across the country, Link noted there is a reduced pool of employees able to meet the demands of farming operations. The recruitment process is thus tied, at least somewhat, to this reduced pool, not to mention the swath of factors, political and otherwise, that affect employment beyond the job market’s interior sways.
“We try to be creative and find unique ways to find people and keep going,” Link said. “We ask our current employees for referrals, we make regular posts on Facebook and Indeed, and we reach out to local schools and trade centers.”
Swisslane Farms, located in Alto, Mich., also partakes in the TN Visa program, which offers nonimmigrant visas that do not lead to citizenship or permanent residency to Mexican or Canadian citizens. Individuals may then enter the United States to work in professional business settings. This outside-the-box approach to recruiting opens doors to hiring opportunities the farm would not otherwise consider. If the pool is small, go to another pool. Still, you can’t just hire anybody, Link said.
Like every business, management is only as good as its team; hiring laborers from a variety of backgrounds requires a multifaceted approach to onboarding and training. That’s why having processes in place is so important.
Procedures are king
If the cow is queen, procedures are king. Quality recruiting and managing call for modes of keeping complexities in sync. As head of HR, Link oversees the management of each Swisslane Farms site, meaning she is responsible for making sure individual managers and employees from every department and location are operating under an umbrella of the business’ best practices. It also means she has to know what those best practices are, and she has to stick to them.
“I love systems and processes, but I don’t like to follow them,” Link said. “That’s the biggest challenge. When you have a big business and you’re trying to streamline things, you have to follow processes. Making exceptions creates confusion and distrust. You need to stay consistent.”
She continued, “It’s striking that balance of when do we go with our gut and when do we follow the process? At the end of the day, we have to have the right people in place at every step of production or the business won’t be what it should. So how do we do that?”
If the key to successful farm management is attention to recruitment, then the key to successful recruitment is policies and procedures. Having them in place creates consistent messaging across the board. Candidates see the same expectations and checklists everywhere — no exceptions. Take this concept a step further into the territory of definitively documented job descriptions and farm-as-employer values, and you have a recipe for recruiting precisely who you want to.
“We as an organization have been laying it all out and finding the gaps. We are focusing on right person, right seat,” said Link. “First, figure out what seat is available. Then, decide what would fill that seat. Make a job description that outlines the role exactly. What will the person who fills it be responsible for? What will that person ideally bring to the table?”
Once Link and her team were able to identify their core values and parse those into outlines for individual roles, they were able to actively seek out candidates who would hopefully be a good fit. Link would be the first to admit that no process is perfect, and you will have to account for trial and error.
Still, defining your farm’s values and employment expectations allows for the setting of operational standards for both you and the kind of employee you’re hoping to attract. One way Link has been able to weed out potential ill-fits is by creating a detailed pre-application form which every candidate fills out.
The form is rigorous in its demand for professionalism and intention of inquiry, meaning anyone who isn’t serious about working for Swisslane Farms may not even finish it. Those who see the application through to completion and whose qualifications align with what the farm is looking for are contacted with a request for a phone interview, followed by an in-person interview that includes a couple of farm managers who ask a variety of tailored questions.
“These processes are in place to help us make an informed decision about the candidates we’re considering,” Link said. “We decided to invest in building a solid process to avoid headaches down the line. It’s hard to outline recruitment, yes, but it’s harder to deal with the aftermath of a poor hire. But you have to talk about it. You have to have solidarity. I am blessed to have partners who support what I’m doing.”
It’s an ongoing process
Perfecting your farm’s recruitment process, along with everything else on a dairy, requires constant fine-tuning. Link offered the following checklist as a helpful, though inconclusive, place to start:
- Outline your farm’s values and needs: What will recruiting the right person do for your business? What’s important to you? What would a five-star employee look like?
- Understand your application: What is its purpose? What do you need to know about the applicant to see if they would be a good fit?
- Be consistent: How interested and invested is this candidate? Are you streamlining the forms and documents? (No exceptions.)
Hiring is a headache, Link said. “But, you have to deal with it. Not hiring the right person multiplies that.”
Taking a bit of effort in the beginning of the recruitment process will carry over to the rest of hiring and onboarding — even into farm duties themselves.
Link noted, “What matters most is making sure people stay connected to where their food comes from.” If recruitment is done right, it will attract workers who lend to your dairy’s mission to do just that.
FEBRUARY 2024 ISSUE:• Are robotics for you?
• Fit your facilities to your herd
• Attention to recruitment leads to long-term success
• What are your accounting options?
• A silent profit drain
