Instead they form the basis of the company’s Growing Futures Together programme – a career progression and personal development programme that’s designed to develop staff, lift their skill levels and help them gain new expertise to take them to the next stage in their careers.
The 2700ha property on the north bank of the Rakaia River is one of the country’s earliest large-scale equity partnerships and since it was purchased back in 1999 has been extensively developed from bony dryland thanks to irrigation.
It now includes nine farm dairies and milks 7500 cows producing close to three million kilograms of milksolids.
The 42 shareholding entities incorporate more than 100 individual stakeholders.
It might not be your average dairy farm, but the approach the management team has adopted for staff development and training creates a template that could work on any farm, no matter what the size or ownership structure.
The development of the programme has a back story that’s important to understand because the People Passports and Growing Futures Together hinge on a culture and set of values.
Defining that value set was one of the very first tasks Grasslands Group chief executive Gareth van der Heyden and his team tackled in 2011 when he took over at the helm from his position as chief financial officer.
Van der Heyden, son of former Fonterra chairman Sir Henry van der Heyden, joined Grasslands, which includes 12 farms in the United States, in 2010 after eight years with global firm PwC. For three of those years he was based in London.
The values the team came up with are known as the three Ps:
People
- Leadership and teamwork
- Respect for everyone and everything
- Honesty, integrity and loyalty
Pride
- Celebrate success, be proud
- Be positive and look forward
- Work hard, always show up with the right attitude
Performance
- Set clear goals and expectations
- Be innovative. Challenge and deliver best onfarm practice
- Value knowledge, learning and performance.
Gareth says that while they form a foundation for the whole business they’re vital to training and development because they engender a positive culture where staff are happy and engaged.
Not only do they strive to do a great job, they’re enthusiastic about learning more, they want to stay and progress, and others want to join the team.
The values also reinforce that the company values knowledge and learning.
The values are included in the People Passports and staff behaviour in relation to them are assessed by both the staff member themselves and their manager.
Canterbury Grasslands operations manager Shaun Wilson says when it comes to managing and developing people it all starts at recruitment and with the company culture.
The People Passports make it easier to identify the skill gaps in the current team to help with recruiting for the right roles but the adage – recruit for character and train for skill – is one he favours.
“It’s not hard to find training providers and courses to correct skill deficits onfarm but it’s a lot more difficult to turn around a negative attitude,” he says.
Wilson’s been with Grasslands for six years but earlier in his career was involved with training and recruitment.
He says there’s huge value in getting it right when it comes to building on a positive culture and working with staff to develop and train them so they can achieve their own and company goals.
The company’s human relations manager Dana Arcus agrees and says the company is already seeing the benefits of their focus on training and development.
“Staff retention has increased quite markedly and we’re getting people approaching us through word of mouth,” she says.
Being open to training and even retraining has helped Sheree Walters stay with the company and in the industry.
She was a dairy assistant, keen to advance and was an enthusiastic learner, actively engaged in Primary ITO training.
But she developed an allergy and could no longer be in the milking roster so the company looked for other ways to use her skills.
She now heads up the calf rearing operation which rears 2000 calves each year, hires the calf rearers and ensures the company’s programme is followed. She works in the young stock programme and with the dairy farm managers on data collection across a wide variety of areas.
It’s a technical support role that still requires plenty of on-the-job and formal training and she’s now completing her Primary ITO level four.
