Genevieve Griffin-George | February 17, 2021 from GlobalHQ on Vimeo.
When Genevieve Griffin-George was unexpectedly called back to her parent’s Tasman orchard from France after her father suffered a major tractor accident, she found herself immersed in trying to keep the family’s SunGold kiwifruit orchard running.
This included employing staff on their 3.5ha orchard, and she quickly discovered how time-consuming this single but vital task proved to be.
“Typically, you could expect to spend at least two hours on the paperwork, induction, health and safety aspects, and assessment of staff, (and) I quickly came to realise that there had to be a better way.”
Her initial concern was that it was a problem only she was experiencing, given her greenness to the orcharding business, but was proved wrong.
“Any orchardist I spoke to assured me it was one of their biggest issues as well, Griffin-George said.”
Once her dad recovered from the accident, Griffin-George took up a business consulting job in Wellington’s corporate world but the issue continued to follow her around in the back of her mind.
“I knew I needed to develop a means of recording seasonal workers’ recruitment and employment in a way that was contactless and would get them on board quickly,” she said.
Experience had shown that delays could lead to potential staff walking away from the offer, taking up another job elsewhere, or simply leaving the district.
She partnered up with two developers to come up with the prototype app PICMI, along the way picking up innovation awards and a profile at the 2019 Fieldays. It also earned her a spot as the first, and so far only, Kiwi to address the prestigious Australian agri-tech event EvokeAg last year just prior to lockdown.
Lockdown placed PICMI in the right place at the right time, with growers scrambling for staff as covid protocols, which they had to meet if they were to retain essential industry status, loomed.
The app’s contactless hiring process that integrates templated contracts, including New Zealand Kiwifruit Growers Incorporated’s seasonal contract, also captures job seeker details and provides candidates with induction information, removing the need for paperwork and time-consuming orchard site visits prior to work commencing. Working with growers, she determined what the key criteria were for positions, including questions around physical capabilities and experience.
“I had found that my recruiting on the orchard had become very cluttered, with multiple outlets advertising our need for staff, including a sign at the gate, and it was hard to keep track of who was coming and where from,” she said.
PICMI enables orchardists to track how well positions are being filled in real time, and further development intends to enable orchardists to notify other PICMI users if they come across staff they themselves can’t take on, but others may be able to.
“For jobseekers it reduces the friction to find and do work. They know straight away if they have a job or not. Most apply for many jobs and then wait, hoping to hear back. This causes frustration for both parties,” she said.
The ability to customise aspects of PICMI, given no two orchards are the same, adds to its flexibility, tailoring employment needs like specific positions and restrictions within the app.
The app has the ability to deliver an income for Griffin-George as her company is based on a “pay per contract signed” model at $19 a staff contract, with the first 10 offered for free.
“After that you only pay as you are hiring,” she said.
Feedback has been that the cost represents a significant saving in time, with contracts usually being completed within 20 minutes of the employee signing up.
“We are already seeing PICMI deliver some fantastic results for customers this harvest season. Our newest Bay of Plenty customer registered 670 jobseekers and 450 of them secured contracts to work this season. Of the contracts, 45% were signed within one hour and 80% within one day,” she said.
She is confident the app is as valid overseas as it is in NZ, with growers all over the world plagued by staff shortages for seasonal work.
“We have already had interest from Australia and elsewhere,” she said.
