Finding the right balance

Every year at the dairy expo, farm consultant Matt Harms leads a panel of dairy industry people through a topic relevant to the industry.

The topics of workers, employees and employment conditions are often in the news.

The pandemic proved how reliant Australia’s workforce economy is on backpacker and short-term visa workers. This is true of agriculture as much as it is true of hospitality and other sectors.

Two years of border lockdowns during the pandemic ripped the band-aid off the Australian economy’s capacity to skate along on this itinerant workforce.

Two dairy farmers and four employees sat on the panel to discuss employment conditions and workforce capacity at the dairy expo.

Shiona Berry of Glen Alvie and Andrew Perry of Kongwak brought their experiences as employers within the dairy industry.

Tamara Loughridge brought her experience as a salaried farm manager on the family farm.

Jasmine Kneebone, Lachlan Harms and Matt Taylor brought their respective experiences as young employees in the dairy industry.

Shiona said it was important for dairy farmers to recognise their employees were helping them to build an asset, and value them for their contribution.

This included recognising dairy farming was shift work and — like with police, nursing, paramedics and other shift workers — recompensing accordingly.

It also included identifying roles and responsibilities on the farm, and pathways for employees to gain skills, formally and informally.

Shiona said dairy farmers, as employers, needed to recognise the value of work-life balance for their employees and for themselves.

Andrew agreed, and said he brought his perspective from his original role as a veterinarian to his farm workplace — when people stay longer than rostered to finish a job, or work extra shifts, they needed to be properly compensated.

Flexible rosters also enabled employees to swap shifts, or nominate times they were unavailable, due to family or other life commitments.

Tamara is the third generation of her family to work on the family farm, milking a 600-cow herd. Tamara’s knowledge development has included a diploma followed by a degree in agriculture, while she was learning about the dairy industry as a farm worker.

She has since been appointed farm manager, in a salaried role, on her family’s farm, and is working towards farm ownership.

Jasmine is in the second-in-charge role for a dairy farmer and her ambition is to become a sharefarmer.

Lachlan and Matt have both taken the TAFE pathway to gain skills in dairy farming, and are both employed as managers on dairy farms.

Agriculture as a career

Up for debate was the perception at secondary school that agriculture was viewed as a job for failing students, and not as a career pathway to gain skills and expertise and build wealth and assets.

“At school we were actively discouraged from pursuing agriculture, and it was more a male domain,” Jasmine said.

“The [male] deputy principal was married to a farmer, and he encouraged me to pursue agriculture as a career, because he personally knew the value of it.”

Lachlan and Tamara said the education system still identified farming as a fall-back job of limited options, heavily reliant on manual labour, low paying, and was aimed at students who were failing at school.

Short-term class projects like Cows Create Careers did nothing to change that perception.

“Schools and industry need to promote agriculture as a career and how there are different steps to gain a career in the industry,” Jasmine said.

“Dairy has multiple career pathways, and people working in dairy often want to see you [as an employee] progress in the industry.”

An apprenticeship in agriculture, and more specifically in the dairy industry, was a step towards farm ownership.

Tamara said the family farm was an ideal vehicle for promoting people upwards.

“I’ve seen a lot of trainees come through as a stepping stone to a bigger career,” she said.

Andrew and Matt — both with young families — have identified a local student who is keen to work as a milker and in the tractor.

They have designed a workplace roster that enables the student to continue at school and work in regular weekend and school holiday shifts, to learn the skills to become a reliable casual employee.

“We pay the junior at the rate he’s worth, not at the junior rate,” Andrew said.

“He adds value to our farm and every other employee’s role, so we made a decision to pay him what he’s worth.”

Other workplace values and practices included ensuring everyone took their scheduled breaks during their shift, rather than work through.

There was no better way to wear down someone’s enthusiasm for the workplace, than ensuring they didn’t take their lunch break, Matt said.

“How we work as employers, should model good behaviour and work practices for our employees,” Shiona said.

“I don’t want to get up at 3am to milk, so I value those people who we employ who do want to do that.”

Her business has purchased houses in the local town to ensure employees have secure housing and a place to live that is away from the farm.

Red flags and green flags

There are issues around recruitment that were considered ‘red flags’.

Matt was a carpenter before he started working on dairy farms. He is now in the second-in-charge role on Andrew Perry’s dairy farm, and used TAFE training as a pathway into agriculture.

He said how jobs were advertised and the interview process conducted could either attract or turn off a prospective employee. Lack of basic information in an advertisement included where the farm was, the payment rate, acknowledging the shift work status of a lot of the work on farm, and how the farmer modelled work-life balance.

“I like to do my own research about the farm, and a background check on the farmer, before I apply for a job,” Jasmine said.

“There are too many anonymous advertisers. You don’t know where they are or who they are. Ads aren’t clear about hours, roles and responsibilities and wages.”

A poor interview process was another red flag.

“When you ask questions and the employer is unclear about the role and responsibilities, and they don’t seem to have direction and passion for the industry and their farm, they’re red flags,” Lachlan said.

No contract was another red flag. Contracts set out conditions of employment and the responsibilities of the role.

Contracts can also be modified to identify pathways within the workplace.

“You want to know if you’ll be supported to go to courses, or build equity in the herd,” Jasmine said.

Shiona said it was important to have those regular conversations with employees about what they wanted to learn and how to support that.

Another major red flag was a lack of concern about safety in the workplace.

‘Green flags’ included clean dairies, farms with maintained fences, and the farmer speaking with passion and pride about their workplace and how they want to grow their farm.

Green flags prioritised farmers who want to increase milking numbers and improve facilities to make jobs easier to do.

“If the farm looks like the farmer loves it, I want to work there,” Jasmine said.

“That’s the standard I want to work within, and an employee is more likely to maintain the standard that’s set for them from day one.”

Shiona said employees had a right to work within safe workplaces, including knowing the cows are quiet and well behaved, and equipment is maintained.

Andrew recently had a new shed built over the dairy, while still milking the herd, and he is grateful his staff stayed with him given it was a stressful process.

“It’s now a better facility for all of us to work in,” he said.

“We’ve also discovered we don’t have to have as many people working in the milking shed.

“But employing just as many people enables us all to have time off and spend time with our families.”