Phil Durst and Stan Moore of Michigan Agricultural Extension Dairy Team at Michigan State University presented initial findings of their work at the Quality Milk Alliance June 2013 meeting at Michigan State University.

1. Using employee feedback as a
means to improve employee
management

2. Employee management
• Increased importance of employees in larger
dairies
• Daily care of animals is performed by
employees.
• The degree of success of the business depends
on the management of employees.
• “Engaged” employees perform better.

3. Engaged: a connection between an employee
and employer which results in that employee
giving Voluntary effort.
Charles Contreras
ZoetisPeopleFirst
• Employees that work to get the desired results, not just to do
the job;
• Employees that take initiative or ownership;
• Employees that are trustworthy;
• Employees that have a positive impact on the team as well as
on the business;

4. Employee management
• But if there is an area of management that dairy
producers, in general, like least, it is employee
management.
• There is little training available to producers in
this area.

5. Managing Dairy Employees More Effectively
• Project designed to improve employee
management through employee feedback
• Phil Durst, Stan Moore, MSU Extension Dairy
Educators, & Felix Soriano, APN Consulting, LLC
• Grant from USDA NIFA, North Central Risk
Management Education Center

6. • Contract with farms after explaining program
• Have owner(s) &manager(s) complete survey of
what they expect employees will say
• Employees provided with a copy of the
questions (English or Spanish) and interviewed
via phone when they called
• One bi-lingual interviewer
• We look for common themes from employees

7. Project goals:
• Help dairy owners & managers understand
employee’s perspectives
• Help owners & managers on these farms
change their management to increase employee
engagement
• Help other producers through educational
programs based on what we learn.

8. • We hope to follow-up and see what changes
they have made and see if there is a change in
one of several measures:
- employee turnover rate
- labor cost/cwt of milk
- number of cows/employee

9. Areas employees are asked about:
• What they like most/least
• Teamwork with co-workers
• Knowledge of farm goals
• Equipped to do the job
• View of supervisor
• Their commitment to learning and the business
• Whether they get performance feedback
• If they think of ways to improve the business

10. Results:
• To date: 9 farms (MI, PA, NY, CT)
• Total cows: 8079
Range: 589 – 1225 cows
• Total employees: 176
Range: 12 - 28
• 139 interviews (79% response rate)
71 English, 63 Latino, 5 Portuguese

11. Results:
Employee turnover rates:
(# new hires/ # employees)
2011 range: 8% - 100%, Average: 46%
2012 range: 3% - 111%, Average: 46%
Employed < 1 yr. 18%
1 – 3 yrs. 31%
> 3 yrs. 51%

12. How long would you like to remain employed
at this farm?
< 1 year Ave: 13%
2-3 years Ave: 22%
Farm Combined:
High: 66% Low: 22%

13. Results:
Labor cost per hundredweight of milk sold:
2011Range: $1.29 - $3.54, Average: $2.48
2012 Range: $1.27 - $3.05, Average: $2.14

14. Main problems identified to date:
• Underestimating employees’ desire to learn
• Failure to provide training
• Failure to specify goals
• Failure to provide specific positive feedback
• Employee-to-employee problems and lack of
communication
• Perception of unequal treatment of employees

15. 1. Underestimating employees desire to learn
Q: How would you rate your interest in learning?
(scale of 1 – 5)
1 = I already know enough to do my job
5 = I am interested in dairy and want to keep
learning.

16. Q: How would you rate your interest in learning?
4.72 (across 139 employees)

17. Q: How would you rate your employees’ interest in
learning?
3.35 (16 owners/managers)
When we underestimate the interest of employees
in learning, not only do we provide less training,
but maybe we think they are less capable of
learning.

18. 2. Failure to provide training
Q: How often do you receive training to improve
your skills?
1 = Never
2 = Only when I started
3 = Once a year
4 = Every 3 months
5 = Once a month

19. Q: How often do you receive training to improve
your skills?
12% Never
36% Only when I started
22% Once a year
17% Every 3 months
13% Every month

20. 3. Failure to specify goals (or KPI’s)
Q: How well are the company goals communicated
to you? (scale of 1-5)
One farm to illustrate: Average rating: 3.55
3 replied “1”: I have heard nothing about
farm goals
5 replied “5”: I know very well what the farm
goals are
1 replied “4”

21. Q: What are some of the farm goals that you
remember? (of those who relied “4” or “5”)
• “Never heard about that”
• “Keep clean the machines and milking room”
• To do what the owner teaches us and not to
change it”
• “Follow the owner’s rules”
• “Better milk production. Cleanliness”
• Milk the cows and keep everything clean. They
told me what I should do and what I shouldn’t”

22. Employees want to know where the
business is heading:
• “They just tell me what I have to do, not farm
goals”
• “Each day they just tell us what we have to do
and that’s it. We don’t have any kind of
information.”
• “All the companies usually put (up) charts (with
the company goals), but here there is nothing.
We come here like donkeys to do what we are
told to do.”

23. Making employee full team members
We believe that in order for employees to be full
team members that they need to know both the
goal (or KPI) and the performance.

24. 4. Failure to provide specific positive
feedback
Q: How often do you receive feedback (good or
bad) about your work from your supervisor?
1 = Never
2 = Maybe a few times a year
3 = Every 3 months
4 = Once a month
5 = At least once a week

25. Q: How often do you receive feedback (good or
bad) about your work from your supervisor?
8% Never
31% Few times per year
12% Every 3 months
25% Once a month
24% Every week

26. Comments:
• “Negative = 5, Positive = 1”
• Feedback is always negative, our job is (always)
wrong.
• “Positive – never; Negative – every week”
• “It seems that we never do a good job”
• “We normally don’t get stuff like that”

27. Q: In the last 15 days how often have you received
recognition and praise for good work?
1 = Not once did he/she recognize what I did
well
5 = He/she praised and thanked me at least
several times in the last 15 days

28. Q: In the last 15 days how often have you received
recognition and praise for good work?
37% Rated it 1: Not once in the last 15 days
5% Rated it 2
13% Rated it 3
19% Rated it 4
27% Rated it 5

29. 5. Problems between employees
• Rate your Relationship with supervisor: 4.40
• Rate the Teamwork within the dairy: 3.74
• Communication problems between shifts
• Good employees want others to work hard
• Employees see it as the manager’s role to hold
employees accountable.

30. • “There are some co-workers that don't do much
hard work. They are always waiting for
somebody else to do it. There is no
communication.”
• “Certain people that are not working with each
other. You can feel the tension.”
• Q: What would you change? “Be more serious
on who they hire, check their background.”

31. Rate the Teamwork within the dairy
Farms (n=9)
• Average farm rating: 3.74
• Farm range: 2.71 - 4.50

32. Employee to employee relations
• Employer can’t force people to like each other,
but they do have a role:
- Involve employees in the interview process
- Facilitate communication between shifts
- Emphasize teamwork and helping each other,
even at the end of a shift.
- Hold employees accountable for results and
methods.

33. 6. Perception of equality in treatment
• Family members vs. nonfamily
• Latino vs. non-Latino
• Employees that had been there awhile vs. new
employees
• Crops crew vs. cattle crew
It is the responsibility of the manager to hold all
employees to the same standard.

34. Perception of equality in treatment
Farms (n=9)
• Average farm rating: 3.89
• Farm range: 3.37 – 4.44

35. Areas for management improvement
• Establish Key Performance Indicators in every
area of the operation.
• Communicate KPI’s
• Tie training to KPI’s
• Training needs to be frequent
• Training needs to be progressive
• Employee feedback needs to be relative to KPI’s

36. Informing the Mastitis & Antibiotic Reduction
grant
• An engaged stable workforce is a better partner
in achieving milk quality goals.
• An engaged stable workforce needs to have
their desire to learn stoked.
• An engaged stable workforce work together to
achieve goals they help set.
• An engaged stable workforce doesn’t look for
shortcuts because they understand the impact.

37. Therefore, we need to talk with dairy owners about
considering their employees as:
• Partners and not as adversaries
• Thinkers and not as “donkeys”
• Individuals and not as anonymous workers.

38. What we’ve learned from farm employees:
• Employees can reveal the strengths and
weaknesses of management
• Employees can help us understand how to
increase their engagement
• Employees show us the roots of turnover and
lower productivity

39. Dairy owners and managers can profit by
listening to their employees:
• Managers need to be humble enough to listen
• Managers need to be wise enough to take it into
account and act on it.

40. Questions?
Thank you!
Phil Durst
MSU Extension
durstp@msu.edu
Stan Moore
MSU Extension
moorest@msu.edu

41. Funding provided by the North Central Center
for Risk Management Education and the USDA
National Institute of Food and Agriculture under
Award number 2010-49200-06200.