And much of the credit for this improvement came back to effective leadership.
“Put first things first,” she said.
“Be leaders first and farmers second.”
The company milks 9600 cows within a 35km radius of Waipukurau in southern Hawke’s Bay, producing 3.1 million kilograms of milksolids (MS) and employs 65 people, 58 onfarm. Owners Peter and Andrea Barry had grown the business rapidly, diversifying from dairying into growing potatoes but in 2009 Peter was killed in an accident.
The immediate priority was to get the business on an even keel while focusing on what could be controlled, Kidd said.
“When the going gets tough put one foot in front of the other. We needed to urgently change our culture and be clear on standards to staff. We kept calm and carried on so staff could trust us.”
The company’s new culture was based around four points for staff; performance counts, working together, being responsible and improving as you go. For the farming culture the big four for BEL became; working together better, days in milk, production per cow and farm working expenses.
“We established performance standards, communicated what we needed to achieve them then put them in place,” Kidd said.
From this grew the Good, Better, Best programme which won the Human Resources Institute of New Zealand initiative of the year in 2011. Kidd described it as pathway for skill and career development goals focusing on people, business leadership, succession and co-ordinating what happened across the farms every day.
Farm managers, herd managers and herd assistants have 12 skills defined for each role.
“It’s all as black and white and as yes and no as possible,” she said.
“Everything is measured back against job targets. And with career planning responsibility is given back to the worker.”
There’s an emphasis on getting to know staff as people in order to be able to recognise and reward them appropriately. Every farm has a farm management plan and budget which managers use on a day-to-day basis. Operations managers become part of the company’s senior leadership team in order to use its good reputation to grow the team which will eventually take over.
“We’re building a resilient, robust business and you have to be brutally honest with yourself about the skills required.”
All managers and staff fill out a 360 degree feedback survey with No 8 HR principal consultant, Lee Astridge in order to improve people management.
Kidd said as the company didn’t employ sharemilkers, staff often would leave to take up these positions to further their careers.
“Our goal is to get three or four years out of farm managers and we achieve that with 30%.’
The quality of applicants for advertised positions was now a lot higher so the company had more choice. But there was also strong competition from other farmers with two staff from the 10 BEL farms poached before Christmas in one season.
“If you’re doing a good job of training people they become valuable to others.”
