Friday, March 29, 2024

A fresh approach

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Junior staff work an eight-hour day on John and Cara Gregan’s south Canterbury dairy farms, get every second weekend off and get a travel allowance. Anne Lee finds out how they do it and what the benefits are for them and their staff.
Reading Time: 7 minutes

John and Cara Gregan asked themselves a simple question when they were trying to work out more sustainable conditions for their staff – “If it was me, my partner or my child how would I feel?”

“I know as a mother I wouldn’t want my 17 or 18-year-old working 12 to 14-hour days,” Cara says.

The couple are relatively new to dairying, converting one of their units six years ago, followed by their home block two years later. 

But that hasn’t stopped them throwing themselves whole-heartedly into the industry – John is a Fonterra Shareholders’ Councillor and Cara is sought out to share her farming business advice, speaking at events such as the South Island Dairy Event.

What their recent entry into dairying does afford them is freedom from long-held conventions and an ability to take a fresh, unblinkered look at ways to improve staff retention and performance.

For John and Cara it comes back to the core purpose of their business strategy – Empowering People – helping their team and whanau to be the best they can be; to inspire, teach and support. They looked first at their junior staff and what they could do to create hours and a roster that protected them from what Cara calls the all-too familiar “destruction” that comes from pushing young staff too hard and too far.

Long hours of up to 120 hours a fortnight aren’t sustainable for young people, she says.

So they stepped back and asked how many hours it took to run the farming operation each fortnight.

“You could say that was the pie and then we looked at how we could divide the pie a bit differently,” she says.

Cara Gregan and Josh Gardner, living in town and commuting to work with a petrol allowance works for him.

The aim was to divide it up so the hours allocated to staff were more realistic, in particular their young dairy assistants. 

Cara and John’s adjacent dairy units are fairly similar in size – one is a 550-cow farm with a 46-aside herringbone dairy and the other is a 450-cow farm with a 40-aside dairy.

Cara says they came to the total hours by looking at tasks that need to be performed and the time required to achieve them.

They then looked at how they divided those hours, given some tasks need people who are more skilled than others.

At this stage they point out they included an operations manager – someone to take a level of responsibility across both units.

“That’s a role we need for our situation because of the commitments we have off-farm,” John says.

Table 1 shows how they broke those hours down and allocated them to job titles.

As part of that process they made a conscious decision to restrict the hours for dairy assistants to an 85-hour fortnight, more like employees in other trades and “town jobs”.

“A full-time equivalent is technically 80-85 hours and we just don’t think you should demand more from your young staff. If we want to attract young people into this industry those hours of work are important but then the big thing is keeping those young people in the industry too,” Cara says.

“Big hours, long days – they burn them out, they wreck them and they leave, not just the farm but the industry, for good,” she says.  

“We’ve got to stop thinking about the number of staff but the hours it takes to run our operations and then we have to divide those hours up in a sustainable way. It’s just a different way of thinking about it.”

As it worked out, the total cost of their system is very similar to operating the “typical” system. 

But to make it work they had to think a bit differently about the daily start and finish times for some staff and use permanent part-time staff to make up the additional dairy assistant hours.

That’s where there’s also a win for the staff members and them as employers.

Their approach is designed out of knowing what’s important to their staff – and they know that because they asked them, because they talked to them and got to know them.

One of their dairy assistants at that stage was Malcolm Elderton. He’s still with them but has stepped up to herd manager. He’s a keen sportsman and wants time in the afternoons and evenings to get to sports practices. 

For him, starting at 5am and working until 1pm was ideal. For the others a later start was preferred so the other dairy assistants start at 9am and work to 5pm when the afternoon milking is completed. 

Last season they had three dairy assistants and two farm managers but this season, given the dire opening forecast milk price, they cut the number of dairy assistants to two, moved Malcolm up to herd manager when one of their farm managers moved on, and their operations manager Wayne Pritchard has stepped in to the milking roster once again.

In both seasons they’ve employed a milk harvester, Rachel Peneameane, to help with the morning milkings. She works three hours a day, Monday to Friday.

The roster is still 11 days on and three off but, based on what staff have said they prefer, John and Cara ensure everyone’s three days off are consecutive and include a Saturday and Sunday.

In some cases that means Friday, Saturday, Sunday and in some cases it’s the weekend plus Monday.

Every second weekend they’re off for three days.

To cover the week days when someone’s off for their long weekend the relief milker or milk harvester steps in, or sometimes one of the other staff.

“We offer them (one of the full-timers) the milking but it’s completely up to them – there’s no obligation at all,” John says. 

They get paid relief milking wages on top of their ordinary pay if they do extra milkings.

“We don’t feel bad about it or
worried that if they take it they’re going to push themselves too hard because it doesn’t happen often and more importantly they’re not absolutely exhausted already because they work reasonable hours the rest of the time,” Cara says. 

It’s a similar story when it comes to the sustainability of 11 days on. They’re not totally wrecked by the end of their stint on the farm and they have the energy to enjoy their three days off.

Housing

 

 

John and Cara Gregan don’t house all their staff on their South Canterbury farms. Their 1000-cow, two-unit operation is 30 minutes drive from Timaru and two of their six staff live off-farm.

Rather than house all their permanent full-time staff the Gregans pay those that live off-farm a travel allowance – a move that’s a win-win in their eyes and the eyes of their staff.

“There are several reasons we went that way,” Cara says.

“The hours our young staff work mean they’re not exhausted and the 30-minute drive isn’t a major bother. They get to be where their mates are and flat with people they don’t work with all day,” she says.

One staff member starts at 5am with the others starting at 9am, and people being late for work because they slept in just isn’t a factor, she says. If you work and live in town a half-hour commute can be the norm and most people don’t get any vehicle allowance, John points out.

“A big benefit for us is that we don’t have to build houses. We pay the staff that live off-farm $120/week as a travel allowance and that’s certainly less than what we’d pay in interest on new housing,” Cara says.

“So as land-owners it makes sense for us but it would be different if you were a contract milker or sharemilker employing the staff,” she says.

They have bought a house in Makikihi, a small settlement about 15 minutes drive from the farm. 

John says it was a much cheaper option than building a house on the farm. It’s a four-bedroom home with a large section and cost close to half the price of a similar sized house built onfarm.

“Houses onfarm are really a depreciating asset – once you build them their value isn’t fully accounted for in the value of the property. But a house off-farm is more likely to be an appreciating asset – or at least hold its value,” he says.

Cara points out living off-farm can have its benefits for married staff too. If the whole family is living onfarm there can be a lot of travel every day, taking children to sports practices and appointments in town. 

It can be cheaper for the one person who is working onfarm to travel in and out to town once each day than for everyone to be coming and going. 

It also means that the other partner can find it easier to get work that fits in with the kids’ hours or that childcare is easier to arrange.

Staff viewpoint

 

Malcolm Elderton’s parents warned him off dairying because of the hours. They knew their sports-mad son would hate not being able to play the team sports he loves. But at the Gregans’ that’s not an issue. Malcolm gets to do both and what’s more he’s getting to advance his dairying career too. 

He was fresh out of school as a 17-year-old last season but still managed to play rugby, cricket and basketball.

That’s because John and Cara Gregan took the time to understand what was important to him and set his hours so he started at 5am and finished at 1pm. 

“I had plenty of time to go home, have a shower, eat lunch, rest up a bit and then get along to practice or a game,” Malcolm says.

He wasn’t wrecked from working 12-hour days so he had the energy to train and he got to spend time with his mates just as normal 17-year-olds do.

He got to play on Saturday afternoons too, with a relief milker or even John stepping in to that role every second weekend when Malcolm was on full days and the milking season wasn’t quite finished. This season he’s stepped up to a herd manager’s role and thought he should extend his hours but Cara wanted him to hold back, given he was only just 18 and she didn’t want him taking on too much too fast.

They compromised and he works until milking is under way so he feels happy everything is set up and going as it should.

For Malcolm the hours when he started were probably the difference between joining the industry or not. They’ve helped secure an ambitious young man who’s keen on continuing his training and progressing through an industry he has a positive feel for.

His colleague Josh Gardner would also have been lost to dairying without the Gregans’ approach.

He’s 20 years old and had been dairying before joining them.

His roster had been six-on, two-off but the two days off weren’t necessarily weekend days.

“I only got a Saturday and Sunday off every six weeks,” he says. 

To catch up with mates he ended up driving from near Geraldine, where the farm was, to Timaru most nights even though he had to get up at 4.30 every morning.

He couldn’t play sport and in the end he decided he’d probably leave dairying and do something else – until he saw the Gregans’ advertisement and the hours they offered.

He now lives in town in a flat with his friends and works from 9am to 5pm, 11 days on and three days off, with his days off always including Saturday and Sunday. He loves the fact he’s in town and doesn’t mind driving to and from work especially since he gets a petrol allowance.

He used to drive a six-cylinder car that chewed through the petrol but with John and Cara’s help he bought a little runabout to get to work and with a bit of budgeting advice he’s now saving for a house.

Farm facts

  • Location: Hunter Downs, Waimate Home Farm, Brookdale 
  • Area: 210ha
  • Cows: 550
  • Farm Dairy: 46-aside herringbone
  • Production: 1100kg MS/ha
  • Farm working expenses: $3.65/kg MS
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