Transcription:
G’Day, Glen Herud here again.
I’m going to carry on talking about dairy
farm staff. I’ve got some statistics for you.
Wage to Revenue Ratio
- NZ Average 21%
- Dairy Farm (Owner/operator) 7%
Statistics New Zealand have
released some data, and they’ve said that the average New Zealand business with
a turnover, greater than $700,000 per year spends 21% of their turnover on
wages. The dairy industry, on the other hand, spends 7% of turnover on wages.
If
these 2 businesses had $1 million turnover, these guys would be spending
$210,000 a year on wages, and the dairy farm is spending $70,000 on wages.
This
backs up what I’ve been saying, is that the dairy industry is under-investing
in staff.
I Think a 750 Cow Dairy Farm Needs To Add 2 Extra Staff
If we take our 750 cow dairy farm, which
I’ve been using as an example, now we have 3 staff on there, plus the boss, so
there’s 4 people on the farm.
I reckon we actually need 5 staff plus the boss. I
think we need to add an extra 2 people onto this farm. That’s not going to be
cheap, that’s going to be an extra $70,000 per year on wages. If you look at
that from a percentage of turnover, if they add $70,000 to their wage bill,
they’re still only spending around 10% to 11% of their turnover on wages, which
is about half of what the New Zealand average is. I think that’s still quite
acceptable.
How Would I Staff a 750 Cow Dairy Farm
How would I setup this dairy farm so that
it could attract and retain good people? This is how I would do it:
I would
start with a Monday-to-Friday work week. I’d get rid of these rosters that you
have, like 6 days on 2 days off, or 9 days on 3 days off; whatever like that. I’d
have a work week from Monday-to-Friday.
You’d need around 2 people to milk in
the morning. That would start at 4:00 a.m. They’d have their breakfast at 8:00 a.m, after milking, they’d go through and have lunch at 1:00 p.m., and that’s the
end. They’re done for the day, they’ve done 8 hours. You start early, you
finish early.
You get another 3 staff, and they’d start at 7:00 a.m. Get up,
have breakfast, go to work, 7:00 a.m. Have lunch at 1:00 p.m. or maybe 12:00 p.m.,
and then they finish up after milking at 5:00 p.m. They’re working around a 9-hour
day. That’s how I would do it.
Basically, we’ve got 3 people on the farm
from 7:00 right through to 5:00. Between the hours of 9:00 a.m, through to 1:00
p.m., you’ve got 5 people on the farm. You can get a heck of a lot of work done.
There’s no excuse for not having everything perfect on your farm.
Of course,
you’ve still got the boss, who’s also floating around, out here. You’ve also
got to bear in mind that if you’ve got 5 staff, you’ve got to give them 4 weeks
annual leave every year, so that’s around 20 weeks. For around half of the
year, one of these staff members is going to be on holiday. I still think that’s
quite an acceptable staffing ratio on a farm that size.
What about the weekends?
I reckon you
only need 2 people to milk. Because you’ve got 2 people milking, all you want
to do on the weekends, I believe, is just milk.
On the Friday afternoon,
everyone should be setting up the farm so there’s nothing else to do on the
weekends but milk. The effluent irrigators moved, the brakes are
moved, I’d even feed out silage on Friday. I’d feed out Saturday
and Sunday’s silage on the Friday, and deal with all lame cows,
all those things get done on the Friday.
On Saturday and Sunday, the 2 guys who
are milking, all they’re doing is milking. Go home after breakfast; wait around
under afternoon milking & milk.
Only Work Every 3rd Weekend
You’ve got 6 staff, because
essentially, you’ve got 5 staff plus the 1 boss; that means you only work every
third weekend. Essentially, you work Monday-to-Friday, a 40-hour week, roughly,
have 2 weekends off in a row, then you work the third weekend, and
then you have 2 weekends off in a row. Those are the sort of conditions that
are going to be appealing and attractive to all workers.
I think if we offer
those terms and conditions, we’d be able to pick the best people and be
attracting and retaining great people into the dairy industry, as opposed to
scraping the bottom of the barrel, which we seem to be doing at the moment.
That sounds all wonderful though, but
there’s a big but: How are you going to pay for an extra $70,000 a year? There
will be farmers out there with 750 cows in Canterbury saying, “There
isn’t $70,000 sitting on the bottom of my budget.”
That’s what I’ll talk about
next time.
