We recently hosted a field day at Rock Spring Farm on the subject of saving labor on the market farm. Inevitably, the discussion at the end of the day – once we had moved into the shade of the packing house – turned to managing employees.
As I described the systems we use to communicate with employees about desired outcomes and the parameters for success, a beginning farmer asked, “But what do you do if they simply don’t do the work?”
I hear variations of this question a lot at farming conferences. I suppose it strikes right at the heart of the local, sustainable produce grower’s dilemma when it comes to hiring people: I grow this food not to get rich, but to make a difference in the world and in people’s lives. I hire people at relatively low wages to do hard, hot, and dirty work that few Americans really want to do. And I depend on them to do the work. Big corporations treat food and people like ingredients and automatons – so shouldn’t I be different?
It all begs the question, why do you hire people? I have a short answer for that: You hire them to make you money.
Put everything else aside for a moment. Forget that you like to surround yourself with people. Forget that you are training young people to be farmers, or to appreciate where their food comes from. Forget being a job creator, a sympathizer with the workers, or a role model.
That’s all good stuff, but fundamentally, you hire people to make you money. To keep your farming business alive. To further your own goals, ignoble and noble alike.
That doesn’t make you a bad person. And it doesn’t mean you have to behave poorly. It does mean that you have to do your job as a manager.
When I have an employee who isn’t doing the work I’ve asked them to do, or isn’t performing to the standards I’ve set, I sit down and ask myself:
If I’ve done these two things – in other words, if I have done my own job as a manager – and the employee isn’t doing the work that I need done, I resort to a short, verbal reprimand. At Rock Spring Farm, we try our best to use one-minute praisings and one-minute reprimands where appropriate, per the short and excellent One Minute Manager. Often, we’ll combine a reprimand with a little bit of re-training: “If you hold the hoe like this, you can slide it under the soil like this.”
If the reprimand doesn’t work, a verbal warning is in order. At the end of the day, I will pull the poor-performing employee aside and tell them in no uncertain terms that their job is on the line. I include exactly why, and exactly what will need to be done by the employee in what timeframe in order to keep her job. (That timeframe has a lot to do with the length of an employee’s tenure. Seasonal workers who are only on the farm for ten weeks don’t get much time to fix performance issues.)
More often than not, this simply doesn’t work. If an employee’s work hasn’t improved after reprimands and re-trainings, it’s probably not going to improve at all. But I feel an obligation to let an employee know exactly what is on the line before letting them go.
If the verbal warning does work, it’s important to communicate that to the employee – they need to know that their head is off the chopping block.
If it doesn’t work, it’s time to let them go.
As I described the systems we use to communicate with employees about desired outcomes and the parameters for success, a beginning farmer asked, “But what do you do if they simply don’t do the work?”
I hear variations of this question a lot at farming conferences. I suppose it strikes right at the heart of the local, sustainable produce grower’s dilemma when it comes to hiring people: I grow this food not to get rich, but to make a difference in the world and in people’s lives. I hire people at relatively low wages to do hard, hot, and dirty work that few Americans really want to do. And I depend on them to do the work. Big corporations treat food and people like ingredients and automatons – so shouldn’t I be different?
It all begs the question, why do you hire people? I have a short answer for that: You hire them to make you money.
Put everything else aside for a moment. Forget that you like to surround yourself with people. Forget that you are training young people to be farmers, or to appreciate where their food comes from. Forget being a job creator, a sympathizer with the workers, or a role model.
That’s all good stuff, but fundamentally, you hire people to make you money. To keep your farming business alive. To further your own goals, ignoble and noble alike.
That doesn’t make you a bad person. And it doesn’t mean you have to behave poorly. It does mean that you have to do your job as a manager.
When I have an employee who isn’t doing the work I’ve asked them to do, or isn’t performing to the standards I’ve set, I sit down and ask myself:
- Have I outlined the desired outcomes and principles for success? In other words, did I tell the employee to go weed the herbs, or did I provide instructions that every inch of bare soil needed to be scuffed and all weeds uprooted in the south three beds of perennial herbs in field 112?
- Have I provided the tools they need to do their job? Did I use my knowledge of my farm and my resources to direct them to the right hoe? Did I provide a field map so that they knew exactly where I expect them to work? Did I provide the training for how to use the tools, and how to sharpen them, and how to work efficiently?
If I’ve done these two things – in other words, if I have done my own job as a manager – and the employee isn’t doing the work that I need done, I resort to a short, verbal reprimand. At Rock Spring Farm, we try our best to use one-minute praisings and one-minute reprimands where appropriate, per the short and excellent One Minute Manager. Often, we’ll combine a reprimand with a little bit of re-training: “If you hold the hoe like this, you can slide it under the soil like this.”
If the reprimand doesn’t work, a verbal warning is in order. At the end of the day, I will pull the poor-performing employee aside and tell them in no uncertain terms that their job is on the line. I include exactly why, and exactly what will need to be done by the employee in what timeframe in order to keep her job. (That timeframe has a lot to do with the length of an employee’s tenure. Seasonal workers who are only on the farm for ten weeks don’t get much time to fix performance issues.)
More often than not, this simply doesn’t work. If an employee’s work hasn’t improved after reprimands and re-trainings, it’s probably not going to improve at all. But I feel an obligation to let an employee know exactly what is on the line before letting them go.
If the verbal warning does work, it’s important to communicate that to the employee – they need to know that their head is off the chopping block.
If it doesn’t work, it’s time to let them go.
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