Attracting the Best Labor

An Experiment in Recruiting New Hires

By Russell Plaschka, Ph.D. Kansas Department of Agriculture

Wanted: People for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success. This is from a wanted ad in the early 1800s but could just as easily be for an opening during calving season in the northern plains. Sounds like a great opportunity, right? Unfortunately, today’s job seekers may not understand what exactly is required of them in an agricultural career, and all industries are struggling to find employees. I know of no single farm or ranch that isn’t looking for good help, but even if they have all their spots filled and the right person came along, they would make a spot for them.

What Are We Up Against?

There may be a whole host of reasons why it is more difficult to find and retain good employees. COVID-19 opened the world to remote work, a new generation making money generating online content, job seekers being more selective on the type of jobs, or there are simply more jobs than people available. As an industry, agriculture is up against more career options than ever before. AgCareers.com in partnership with the National FFA Organization identified more than 250, and counting, different ag related careers. For those young people looking at agriculture, the career path is more than a fork in the road; it is a series of on and off ramps with a highway system that Google Maps may not be able to navigate.

On average for the rural counties across the country, the unemployment rate is roughly 2%-3%. A variety of sources from academia to the Bureau of Labor estimate the unemployment rate for full employment to be anywhere from 4%-6%. Using some rough math from various parts of the country, this means for every one job opening there is 0.8 people available to take that job; it’s a job seekers paradise, if they are looking for employment.

A New Workforce

One of the biggest issues I have noticed in attracting the workforce is that many producers still believe there are “ag kids” out there. Well, to be fair, they are out there but they are very few. If they are out there, they typically have their own family operations to go back to. This means those young people interested in agriculture may not come with the skillsets you need them to have. So, what does this mean? It means we may have to re-think how these workers are recruited, trained, and retained. Unfortunately, we can’t just call up the local ag teacher or county agent and ask if they can recommend a few strong bodies to help work cattle, feed for the weekend, or help over the summer. It does mean that we can make the same calls and ask for a few that are interested in learning about your type of operation, come experience a bit of “day in the life,” and then make a mutual decision if the job is a fit for them and you. Though we have many students in FFA/ag education, 4-H, and enrolling in post-secondary agriculture schools, it does not mean they have the working experience to step onto an operation and know how things work.

Millennials and Generation Z make up most of the workforce you are trying to recruit. A recent article in the Entrepreneur stated that the Generation Z group are changing careers at a rate 134% more than in 2019. They are looking for opportunities to enter the workforce, learn new skills and advance. In agriculture’s case, there may not be much room for advancement, but we can work to ensure they take on more responsibility or perhaps they can take part in decision making for production practices. Millennials and Generation Z also want to be a part of something. We talk about our operations as being a way of life, part of something bigger and special. How are you communicating that message to your employees? Or are you communicating it at all?

Along with your communication, what about your other employees? Roughly 56% of the upper-level management positions are held by the generation called Boomers, and as you are well aware, they are retiring now. How are you transitioning their institutional knowledge to the next manager or even entry level employees? According to a recent survey, 57% say they have shared half or less of the needed knowledge and 21% have shared none of their knowledge to the junior employee. You have invested years in these employees and relied on their gained knowledge to help you be successful in your operation. Attention should be given on how to pry some of the knowledge back out to pass onto new employees. By simply overlapping employment with the new person and having the retiree mentor the new employee, you might just get some of that institutional knowledge passed on, which can save you on-boarding time.

Is There a Silver Bullet?

First off, the bad news, there is no one solution for all operations. Each one of you have a different challenge, be it location, size/ scope of operation, number of employees or even mixing nonfamily with family employees. Most of you have already had to raise rates of pay, provide incentives/benefits, hire foreign labor through H2A programs and, hopefully, changed recruiting practices. What I lay out next is just one possibility in recruiting young people before they decide what career they will pursue, either right out of high school or after post-secondary education.

The Immersion Experience

Just as it says in the name, this is an immersion into your operation, cow-calf, backgrounder, starter yard, grazing, feedyard, animal health or a combination of many including grain and forage production. This idea grew from a conversation with one of our interns about the types of careers that can be found within agriculture and the lack of understanding of what goes on out of eyesight from the highway. If you think about it, would the average person, even a person involved in agriculture, truly understand what the career opportunities are in your operation just by driving by? My guess would be no.

We started by selecting a willing stakeholder that needed to connect to the local youth. In this case we highlighted a feedyard in Kansas that wanted to recruit more local talent to their various operations. Working with their management team, we selected five local high schools to invite and connected with the local ag teacher or counselor to select five or six students from each school who had an interest in learning more about the careers in the feeding industry. Next, the feedyard reached out to their industry partners to assist in the rotations. Those partners were the ones selling/servicing their feed trucks, heavy equipment, feeding and animal health tracking software, and their animal health providers. By using these partners, they were able to limit the number of employees that would have had to leave their daily duties. This also provided additional experiences for the students to see other career opportunities that supported the feeding industry.

The rotations were as follows:

• Feed truck - Students were instructed on how to operate the feed truck and, in an empty bunker silo, they attempted to lay out a consistent line of silage for 100 ft. They also saw the technology used in the cab that assists the driver in accurately delivering feed.

• Equipment - Students operated a pay-loader in the bunker by driving up to a pre-made pile of silage, filled the bucket, backed up, and dumped it. Also during this rotation, students got to interact with the technicians who service the equipment.

• Feed mill - A recipe had been pre-made and all the ingredients were laid out in buckets in the mill. Students had to follow the recipe, sample, weigh, mix and test the ration to ensure the recipe had been followed. The nutritionist guided the students through this while explaining the importance of each ingredient for the gain needed for the cattle.

• Animal health - Pharmaceutical reps and veterinarians demonstrated and assisted students on mixing and administering vaccines. Students were chute-side as an animal health crew evaluated and treated the pulled cattle.

• Marketing management - Participants matched their true evaluation skills against the marketing manager. Students listened as he evaluated a pen of cattle, and then they evaluated the next pen. They compared notes as he explained estimating weights, percent choice, and how many days those not ready would need to stay on feed.

• Office - The software management service technicians were on hand to walk students through the feed management and animal health management software as well as talked about careers on that side of the industry. Students were able to see and work with a training software that showed just how the management could adjust feed rations, pen feeding order, and track animal health protocols. During this rotation students heard from the manger about the other careers such as commodity procurement, human resources and accounting.

The great thing about this activity was that it could be customized for any operation and limited only by your imagination, as long as we considered the risk involved with working with youth. Work with your local high schools, depending on your location you may only have one school and that is fine. Keep the numbers around 25-30 students so the groups they are broken into are small — three to five maximum. The point is to provide each student an opportunity to do the task demonstrated to them. The key here is this is not just a field trip, this is a “get your hands dirty” experience.

Feedback from the students, businesses and industry partners have been overwhelmingly positive. Each time these activities were done the businesses have reported that they received inquiries from students on internships as well as job opportunities. This is also true for those industry partners helping with the events.

You all know the challenges in attracting new employees; we have low unemployment, a changing demographic in the workforce that is available, a change in culture within that demographic, and there are more opportunities in agriculture than ever before. How you set yourself apart from other opportunities is key to attracting the right person for the right job. The immersion activity is just one way to get to young people early and show them the great opportunities you have right in their communities. Think about all the young people in your community; they all will be looking at career opportunities. If you are not in their ear talking about the jobs you have, your competition will be.

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