Why do good people leave?

Why do good people leave farms? 10 ways to make them want to stay

We hear a lot about agriculture’s labour shortage.

“We can’t find good people.”
“Nobody wants to work anymore.”
“It’s impossible to recruit experienced staff.”

And there is no doubt that finding good people has become harder. But perhaps there is another question we should be asking:

When we do find good people, what are we doing to keep them?

Recruitment is expensive, time-consuming and disruptive. Losing an experienced team member doesn’t just mean placing another advert. Knowledge walks out of the gate with them. Other people have to pick up the workload. Morale can suffer and, if people leave regularly, those remaining may start wondering whether they should do the same. So before we focus entirely on finding more people, perhaps we should spend more time thinking about the experience we’re creating for those already working with us.

Here are ten places to start.

1. Get the basics right

Pay people correctly and on time. Provide decent working conditions, appropriate equipment, and a suitable place to take a break. Make sure working hours are reasonable, and people can get proper time away from work. These things might sound obvious, but they form the foundations of the employment relationship.

2. Remember that people have a life beyond the farm

Agriculture involves unsociable hours and periods when everyone needs to work harder. Most people entering farming understand that. But they still need a life. Being able to attend a child’s sports day, spend a weekend with their partner or simply know when they will next have a day off matters. A little flexibility can create an enormous amount of loyalty.

3. Say thank you

When somebody does a good job, tell them. Recognition doesn’t need an employee-of-the-month scheme or an annual awards ceremony. Often, a genuine “Thanks – you’ve done a great job today” means far more. Don’t let the only conversations people have with their manager be about what went wrong.

4. Talk to people – and listen

Some of the most important conversations on a farm happen over a cup of tea, leaning against a gate or sitting in the tractor cab. Ask people how things are going. What frustrates them? What would they change? What ideas do they have? And then listen to the answer. People are far more likely to care about a business when they feel their opinion matters.

5. Give people some responsibility

Good people don’t usually want to be told exactly what to do every minute of every day. Give them ownership. Let them make decisions. Trust them. There may be occasional mistakes, but responsibility creates engagement and develops the people who could become your future herd managers, farm managers and business leaders.

6. Help people to grow

One of the biggest mistakes we can make is assuming somebody is happy doing the same job indefinitely.

Ask:

“Where would you like to be in two or three years?”

Then think about how you can help them get there.

Training matters, but development isn’t only about courses and certificates. Coaching, mentoring, greater responsibility and exposure to different parts of the business can be equally valuable.

7. Deal with poor behaviour

Nothing drives good people away faster than repeatedly tolerating the behaviour of someone who makes everyone else’s working life miserable. Your best employees notice what you tolerate. If somebody is bullying, constantly negative, disrespectful or simply refuses to work as part of the team, deal with it. Protecting your culture sometimes means having difficult conversations.

8. Don’t confuse long hours with commitment

Farming will always have busy periods. Harvest, calving and lambing don’t fit neatly into a working week. There will be times when everyone needs to dig deep. But exhaustion shouldn’t become the norm for working. After intense periods, help people recover. Encourage holidays, give time back where possible and make taking proper rest acceptable. Recovery is part of performance.

9. Be the leader you would want to work for

People watch what leaders do far more closely than what they say. Do you stay calm under pressure? Admit when you’ve got something wrong? Treat people consistently? Keep your promises? Take holidays yourself? Speak respectfully to people when things aren’t going well? Culture is created through hundreds of small leadership moments.

10. Ask yourself: why would someone stay here?

This might be the most important question of all. If one of your best employees received a job offer tomorrow with similar pay, why would they choose to stay with you? Would it be because they feel valued? Because they enjoy being part of the team or learning and progressing? Because you trust them and the farm gives them a good quality of life? Or simply because they’re proud to say they work there? Those are powerful reasons to stay – and they’re difficult for another employer to replicate.

Retention starts long before somebody resigns. 

When a valued employee hands in their notice, it’s tempting to ask:

“What can we do to persuade you to stay?”

But by then, the real decision may have been made months earlier. Perhaps the more useful question is one we should be asking our people regularly:

“What would make this somewhere you’d still want to be working in three years’ time?”

If agriculture is serious about tackling its people shortage, recruitment is only half the answer. We need to become much better at keeping the good people we already have. Because the best recruitment strategy might just be creating a farm that good people don’t want to leave.

Happy Team. Happy Farm.

#FarmLeadership #StaffRetention #FarmManagement #Agriculture #HumanPotential #PeopleInAgriculture

Paul Harris
Managing Director, REAL Success 

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