Where valued staff call the shots

He was commenting on Monday, August 6 being designated ‘farm worker appreciation day’. 

The idea, seemingly from the US, caught on with DairyNZ which suggested workers could be offered, say, a special lunch or an early knock-off that day. 

Allomes admits he did nothing in particular for his staff that day -- no muffins in the milking shed at 5am -- but he is one of many farmers well known for good, innovative employment practices. 

He likes the idea of the day as a prompt for employers to stop and check whether they appreciate and value their staff.

Allomes and his wife Nicky take an unconventional but effective approach to being employers -- and it works, he says.

“We have the philosophy that our team are our customers and that our whole staffing structure is customer-led. So the team takes the lead on how they want to be rostered and organised. 

“I know how many hours I need [worked] on the farm and then it’s up to the team to work out who does what hours, when, and how many different people we need to make that work.”

Allomes says some people want to work 45-50 hours out of choice while others who can’t or don’t want to work longer hours are quite happy to fill in the gaps.    

He points out that NZ has fairly low unemployment but notably high underemployment.

“Many people in our community, for whatever reasons, can’t work full time but want more part time opportunities.... On farms we have an amazing opportunity to package our jobs up in much smaller ‘bites’ that can make jobs more available.”

Employers today must pay some heed to the needs and aspirations of young people, he says. They want to feel part of a business and have some responsibility. 

So he has stripped out the standard hierarchical method and moved to a system where everybody has direct responsibility for some part of the farm business -- more experienced staff have greater responsibility and newer staff less.

“A farm assistant can still be responsible, but it’s just that their area is quite narrow. They can be the boss in the area they are responsible for and the others in the team answer to them,” he says. 

“It may be as simple as being in charge of the water system, or power or mating -- something narrow but also with important implications for the farm. As they gain more experience the breadth of their responsibilities increases.”

Allomes says this means that from day one even the most junior person is a boss and they like it and so do all the staff. But he cautions that in this busy time of the year on dairy farms, this should not be used as an excuse for slack care of staff.

“Adequate staffing structures go hand in hand with profitability,” he says.

Thanks for the job well done

DairyNZ’s people team manager Jane Muir says any employee, in no matter what business, will feel more valued when they are paid fairly and have good work-life balance; “and quite simply when their boss says ‘thank you’ for a job well done.”

Recent statistics show 36,000 people working on NZ dairy farms: about 50% employees, 45% business owners including farm owners, sharemilkers and contract milkers, and the remainder unpaid family members. 

Muir says employers should take active interest in their staff and know what appeals to them and motivates them.