Build capability in your farm team

Start with career pathways

A capable, confident team with clear accountabilities supports farm performance, and allows people to grow their dairy career. Building that capability starts with regular development conversations.

Use the Dairy Farm Career Pathways guide to get the conversation started:

• Discuss career progression with your employee using this guide to show different pathway options.
• Identify their current capabilities and responsibilities on the table over the page.
• Discuss their aspirations and the capability required for future roles, along with the skills they’d like to grow.
• Plan the next steps for learning and development, tailored to achieve their goals.

View the career pathways guide

Grow skills and confidence

Investing in training and development helps people build confidence, improve performance and grow their careers. Developing both technical and people skills can help team members take on greater responsibility and contribute more to the farm business.

Explore Personal training and development and Coaching and mentoring employees

Strengthen teamwork and communication

Strong teams don't happen by chance. They are built through good leadership, communication and a workplace culture that helps people succeed. Personal development and training can improve job satisfaction while helping you build the skills your business needs. Creating a training and development plan together with your employee, covering both on-farm and off-farm aspects, demonstrates your support and appreciation for them. It also sets your business up for success.

Legends. Together, for the future of dairy

When we talk to managers and business owners, they tell us they continue to face challenges finding people with the right mindset to work on their farm.

When we talk to farm teams, they say their managers need to improve their communication and planning skills.

We know it’s tough finding the right people - those with the right mindset, skills, and attitude to help grow your business - but sometimes the best team is the one you already have. That’s why we’ve created the Legends video series – to help you with building stronger, more capable teams.

This video series originated from a Huntly dairy farmer who wanted to lift the soft-skill capability of dairy farm assistants and their managers to improve teamwork, outcomes and job satisfaction.

The messages the videos share are about people stepping up together to become a champion team, a team where people trust each other, communicate, know what to do, have a laugh, learn, support each other and deliver great outcomes for themselves and the farm business they work in.

They’re designed to:

• Motivate and inspire your team to take ownership and pride in their work.
• Build confidence in new and developing staff by developing their farm and life skills.
• Help with meaningful conversations around teamwork, communication, and leadership.
• Help managers lead with confidence and build a positive farm culture.

We encourage farm teams to:

• Watch the videos with their team (at meetings or one-on-one).
• Share the short clips in team chats or on social media.
• Use the video to kick off discussions about teamwork, communication, and leadership.

Support ongoing development

Capability is built over time. Taking the time to understand each team member's strengths, goals and aspirations can help identify opportunities to build skills and support their career development. Regular check-ins keep conversations focused on progress, challenges and practical next steps. Schedule a development conversation at least once a year and use regular one-to-one check-ins to keep learning and career progression on track.

Plan a career conversation