Focusing on the challenges

In February 2019 nine South Island farmers put their hands up to be part of a series of innovation workshops tackling current dairy workplace challenges.

As part of the design process, this farmer co-design team visited Auckland businesses to understand the pressures faced by non-agricultural workplaces, and their responses.

Six ideas generated by the team were then selected for development and on-farm testing:

• Disrupting dairy roles

  Less hierarchical team structures to empower and engage the whole team.

  This prototype focuses on redefining roles to deliver a more efficient and appealing workplace that is less hierarchical, with a creative approach to working with farm teams. Farmers already employ a variety of methods to create happy and effective teams, and this concept will draw on ‘Agile management’ approaches to think differently about team management.

  The main activities include:

  • To explore the application of 'Agile' style approaches in dairy farm management
  • Understand how ‘Agile’ can lead to resilient systems that are easy to execute
  • Train and coach some farm teams through the use of Agile management

  Kanban boards
  A workflow management tool that improves communication by making tasks visible to the whole team. Try a Kanban board with your farm team.

• Operation choice

  A tool that matches tasks to people and expands labour availability into the local community.

  In this prototype we are looking for ways farm teams can have more choice in the tasks they do on farm. We are looking for approaches to move away from rigid structures around allocating daily tasks to a more flexible approach. This first requires understanding the different tasks that are undertaken on farms, the hours those tasks take, and the time of the year they need to be done. Then we can look at allowing people to choose the ‘task packages’ they want. Success would be having access to people who wouldn’t usually be able to work on farm due to time or other constraints.

  The main activities include:

  • Testing the idea of work choice with a range of farm teams
  • Potentially implementing a prototype app on farms
  • Understanding how the task packages differ across a range of farm types

• Technology in training

  A transformation of the way we standardise, develop, and deliver training through better use of technology.

  In this prototype we aim to make learning a technology-supported visual experience for use in real farm situations. We are seeking a new way to easily train and induct staff. Currently farmers show new staff what to do. This can be an intensive process, and tasks can be quite farm specific. Developing innovative ways to get practical and credible information to entry-level farm staff when they need it will develop more confident and capable farm teams.

  Activities in this prototype will be focused around:

  • Understanding the skill needs of entry-level farm staff
  • Canvassing innovative technology-supported learning approaches
  • Piloting a tool to help entry-level farm staff quickly upskill in an engaging way

• Breeding better leaders

  Valuing people leadership and EQ development over traditional transactional skills.

  The aim of this prototype is to design and test a novel approach to engaging dairy farmers (and their teams) around leadership capability building. Leadership and emotional intelligence are often talked about, but difficult to master in practice. Many farmers are more comfortable focusing on transactional skills around pasture and animal management rather than ‘people stuff’. The long- term goal is for dairy farmers to be known as employers with high empathy and leadership skills.

  Activities in this prototype will include:

  • A simple and supported process of learning, coaching and peer-to-peer interactions around practical concepts of leadership
  • Understanding how to adopt a ‘growth mindset’, and helping individuals understand how they learn
  • A training and mentoring pilot will be aimed at engaging people who don’t traditionally seek out leadership

• Alternative milking windows

  A focus on maintaining profitability while improving the workplace and reducing burnout.

  Milking is a key feature of the dairy working day, and potential employees can be put off by unsociable milking times. However, alternatives to the traditional twice-a-day milking, such as once-a-day, have milk production penalties. This prototype is aimed at developing alternative milking windows where the related savings outweigh the loss in milk production. Success is where employees work less with more flexible hours.

  This prototype would include:

  • Creating robust cost-benefit information on alternative milking windows
  • Case studies on how farmers have managed their farms with alternative milking windows
  • A decision support calculator

  These areas are currently being investigated in a Sustainable Farming Fund project, started in July 2019, called Flexible Milking for Healthier People and Cows. Information about the three-year project, led by DairyNZ and co-funded through MPI and the Sustainable Farming Fund, can be found here.

• Transferable, measured potential

  Development, training and formal recognition of skills that are transferable both inside and outside of dairy.

  Dairy careers are perceived by other industries as unskilled. The skills developed by dairy employees are not recognised, and often regarded as repetitious and unappealing.  The aim of this prototype is to enable farm staff to specialise in farm skills that are recognised as transferable to other industries, such as mechanical skills, management, data analysis, people management and leadership. Aspects of this prototype are currently being investigated in DairyNZ, through Dairy Training Limited and Centres of Vocational Excellence.

These concepts are being piloted and assessed with some members of the farmer team this season. Successful ideas will be rolled out to interested farmers across the country in the next season.