Increasing staff’s sense of achievement and ability
16 June 2020
We recently contacted sheep, beef and deer farmers across New Zealand to see how valuable Primary ITO on-farm learning is for their farming businesses.
In the first of our series, we speak to Sam Bunny – Farm Operations Manager at Rangitaiki Station.
1. Why do you train your staff?
- Individual personal development.
- This increases staff’s sense of achievement and ability to further there on personal knowledge and therefore drive for progression.
- Job satisfaction increases when they are developing.
- Understanding the ‘why’ better (why we do things on farm), increases staff’s engagement in the big picture and therefore lifts culture/ and individual performance.
- Puts some theory behind the practical.
- Increased chance for future higher positions and career progression – and increased chance of being successful in those roles.
2. What value does training your team add to your business?
- More educated staff members.
- Staff that are feeling valued and are developing are higher performing.
- More engaged and driven to be successful – staff that understand why we make the decisions we do and can contribute in the decision making have a higher drive to want to do well and want the farm to perform. They feel some involvement and responsibility.
- This all, in turn leads to having and high performing/engaged/positive and driven farm culture focused and education and success.
3. How do you find the process of ‘on farm’ training?
- Difficult at times. Hard when so busy – can easily get focused on the jobs at hand and getting them done rather than spending time training.
- Find it a lot easier with staff that want to be developed and ask questions – self push. Hard to train someone who doesn’t push for it themselves.
- Block courses good.
Primary ITO sheep, beef and deer qualifications are available here.
Contact us on 0800 20 80 20 to talk to your local Training Adviser and see how the growth of your people can add value to your business.