Farmscape for January 30, 2018

A consultant with HR Basics is encouraging swine sector employers to focus more on a worker's motivation and less on their experience.
"Team Building" will be among the topics discussed as part of the 2018 Manitoba Swine Seminar February 7th and 8th in Winnipeg.
Janice Goldsborough, a consultant with HR Basics, says the big challenge facing pork sector employers today is the lack of qualified people interested in working with swine.

Clip-Janice Goldsborough-HR Basics:
More and more producers are looking at the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, bringing people in from other countries to work on their pork operations.
That brings in a whole new dynamic to the farm because you're bringing in new cultures so you have to look at, as well as having people who are qualified, you are also then faced with the challenge of incorporating all of the new cultures, any religious aspects into the workplace.
That can create a whole set of challenges just on its own for the swine producers.
What they need to look for are people who may not necessarily have any farming experience but who are eager to learn, who are willing to do what ever it takes to get the job done.
You can train skills but you can't train work ethic and aptitude so producers need to go beyond the mind set that they're looking for qualified people and look for people who are more willing to work and do new tasks and new duties that are associated with the job.
Again, they can train them for the tasks that are required but they've already got somebody who is enthusiastic and a hard worker.

Goldsborough says getting workers is once thing but after you've got them its important to keep them so offering something beyond just the pay cheque is important.
She says for a lot of people the compensation isn't the most important part of the job but rather they're looking for other things such as a benefits package, flexibility in scheduling and the feeling that they are considered a valuable part of the operation.
For Farmscape.Ca, I'm Bruce Cochrane.

       *Farmscape is a presentation of Sask Pork and Manitoba Pork