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Building Your Reputation as an Employer . Bernard L. Erven Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics Ohio State University . Introduction. Farm employers must compete aggressively for quality employees. Lack of quality employees jeopardizes the business.
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Building Your Reputation as an Employer Bernard L. Erven Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics Ohio State University
Introduction • Farm employers must compete aggressively for quality employees. • Lack of quality employees jeopardizes the business. • Challenge is to attract and keep people who have excellent non-farm opportunities.
The Challenge • Build a positive reputation as an employer. • Bring creativity, imagination and self-confidence to this long-term challenge.
Three key ingredients • Design jobs with employees in mind. • Build a farm team. • Select appropriate personnel practices.
First Key Ingredient: Design Jobs With Employees In Mind • Uninteresting or boring jobs cause problems. • Capitalize on employees’ interests and the advantages they see in farm work.
Managers design jobs • Start job design with tasks essential to the success of the farm. • Proceed from essential tasks to what employees want in their jobs. • Pay attention to a job’s details.
Job design requires paying attention to: • The fact that no job is perfect. • Suggestions from employees. • The negative stereotypes of farm work.
Job design guidelines • Design jobs to encourage use of a variety of skills. • Design jobs so that an employee does a total job. • Design jobs so that the employee understands the significance of the job. • Include responsibility, challenge, freedom and the opportunity to be creative in the job. • Make feedback a part of the job.
Second Key Ingredient: Build A Farm Team • Emphasize team building. • Build cohesiveness. • Involve the team. • Reward team effort. • Employ working managers.
Teams are built through four stages: • Forming • Storming • Norming • Performing
Third Key Ingredient: Select Appropriate Personnel Policies • Appropriate personnel policies help build a positive reputation. • The employer’s positive reputation gives new employees pride in having been hired. • The following 14 personnel policies help build the desired positive reputation.
1. Like, enjoy and appreciate employees • Bring a positive attitude to the employer/employee relationship. • Understand that employees sense employers’ attitudes. • Work to prevent a single employee from poisoning attitudes. • Focus most attention on highly valued employees rather than on the least valued.
2. Use written job descriptions • Job descriptions help employees understand their jobs. • Job descriptions satisfy curiosity about what others do. • Training and performance evaluations can be based on job descriptions.
3. Provide training • Train, train, train! • Remember that most employees do not like to do what they do not do well. • Treat training as an investment in people.
4. Show trust • Show trust by delegating authority and responsibility. • Use trust to build a sense of “team.” • Use delegation to free up time for the most important and long-run management responsibilities.
5. Catch people doing things right • Catch people doing things right and say thank you. • Emphasize the positive during performance appraisals. • Combine talk about problems with plans for improvement.
6. Develop pride • Build pride in the farm. • Recognize employees. • Show outsiders that employees are a source of pride.
7. Celebrate successes • Celebrate the farm's successes. • Reinforce the notion that supervisors and employees work together and then celebrate together. • Use celebrations to express appreciation.
8. Communicate clearly and often • Understand that employees want to communicate. • Don’t wait for employees to ask. • Create communication opportunities.
9. Compensate fairly • Pay attention to external and internal equity. • Compare what an employee is earning to what he or she could earn elsewhere. • Compare pay internally on basis of job’s value. • Avoid basing pay on seniority.
10. Provide exceptional non-monetary benefits • Understand what benefits other employers offer. • Consider a wide range of benefits. • Consider a cafeteria approach to benefits.
11. Provide extraordinary informal benefits • Offer creative informal benefits and rewards • Consult 1001 Ways to Reward Employees
12. Promote from within • Use promotion to recognize contributions. • Use promotions to show confidence in employees. • Show employees that they have advancement opportunities.
13. Make the business family-friendly • Understand employees’ family frustrations. • Anticipate family caused frustrations and pressures. • Help employees deal with their family responsibilities. • Provide nontraditional assistance.
14. Be proud of advancing employees • Be proud when employees are ready for career advancement. • Accept the disappointment of losing an outstanding employee. • Turn the loss to advantages for other employees. • Work to have each employee leave with a positive attitude.
Summary • Each farm needs high quality employees. • Making the farm an appealing place to work helps overcome the frustration of mediocre workers.. • The three key ingredients for success are: • Design jobs with employees in mind. • Build a farm team. • Select appropriate personnel practices.
