Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Building Your Reputation as
an Employer Bernard L. Erven
Department of Agricultural,Environmental and Development
EconomicsOhio State University
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Introduction
• Farm employers must compete aggressively for quality employees.
• Lack of quality employees jeopardizes the business.
• Challenge is to attract and keep people who have excellent non-farm opportunities.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
The Challenge
• Build a positive reputation as an employer.
• Bring creativity, imagination and self-confidence to this long-term challenge.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Three key ingredients
• Design jobs with employees in mind.
• Build a farm team.
• Select appropriate personnel practices.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
First Key Ingredient: Design Jobs With Employees In Mind
• Uninteresting or boring jobs cause problems.
• Capitalize on employees’ interests and the advantages they see in farm work.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Managers design jobs
• Start job design with tasks essential to the success of the farm.
• Proceed from essential tasks to what employees want in their jobs.
• Pay attention to a job’s details.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Job design requires paying attention to:
• The fact that no job is perfect.
• Suggestions from employees.
• The negative stereotypes of farm work.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Job design guidelines1. Design jobs to encourage use of a variety of skills.2. Design jobs so that an employee does a total job.3. Design jobs so that the employee understands the
significance of the job.4. Include responsibility, challenge, freedom and the
opportunity to be creative in the job.5. Make feedback a part of the job.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Second Key Ingredient: Build A Farm Team
• Emphasize team building.• Build cohesiveness.• Involve the team.• Reward team effort.• Employ working managers.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Teams are built through four stages:
1. Forming
2. Storming
3. Norming
4. Performing
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Third Key Ingredient: Select Appropriate Personnel Policies
• Appropriate personnel policies help build a positive reputation.
• The employer’s positive reputation gives new employees pride in having been hired.
• The following 14 personnel policies help build the desired positive reputation.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
1. Like, enjoy and appreciate employees• Bring a positive attitude to the
employer/employee relationship.• Understand that employees sense
employers’ attitudes.• Work to prevent a single employee from
poisoning attitudes.• Focus most attention on highly valued
employees rather than on the least valued.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
2. Use written job descriptions
• Job descriptions help employees understand their jobs.
• Job descriptions satisfy curiosity about what others do.
• Training and performance evaluations can be based on job descriptions.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
3. Provide training
• Train, train, train!
• Remember that most employees do not like to do what they do not do well.
• Treat training as an investment in people.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
4. Show trust
• Show trust by delegating authority and responsibility.
• Use trust to build a sense of “team.”
• Use delegation to free up time for the most important and long-run management responsibilities.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
5. Catch people doing things right• Catch people doing things right and say
thank you.
• Emphasize the positive during performance appraisals.
• Combine talk about problems with plans for improvement.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
6. Develop pride
• Build pride in the farm.
• Recognize employees.
• Show outsiders that employees are a source of pride.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
7. Celebrate successes
• Celebrate the farm's successes.
• Reinforce the notion that supervisors and employees work together and then celebrate together.
• Use celebrations to express appreciation.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
8. Communicate clearly and often • Understand that employees want to
communicate.
• Don’t wait for employees to ask.
• Create communication opportunities.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
9. Compensate fairly
• Pay attention to external and internal equity.
• Compare what an employee is earning to what he or she could earn elsewhere.
• Compare pay internally on basis of job’s value.
• Avoid basing pay on seniority.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
10. Provide exceptional non-monetary benefits• Understand what benefits other employers
offer.
• Consider a wide range of benefits.
• Consider a cafeteria approach to benefits.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
11. Provide extraordinary informal benefits
• Offer creative informal benefits and rewards
• Consult 1001 Ways to Reward Employees
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
12. Promote from within
• Use promotion to recognize contributions.
• Use promotions to show confidence in employees.
• Show employees that they have advancement opportunities.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
13. Make the business family-friendly
• Understand employees’ family frustrations.
• Anticipate family caused frustrations and pressures.
• Help employees deal with their family responsibilities.
• Provide nontraditional assistance.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
14. Be proud of advancing employees
• Be proud when employees are ready for career advancement.
• Accept the disappointment of losing an outstanding employee.
• Turn the loss to advantages for other employees.
• Work to have each employee leave with a positive attitude.
Strategic Business Planning for Commercial Producers
Summary• Each farm needs high quality employees. • Making the farm an appealing place to work helps
overcome the frustration of mediocre workers..• The three key ingredients for success are:
1. Design jobs with employees in mind.2. Build a farm team.3. Select appropriate personnel practices.