The Ag Sector Is Not Exempt From Flexible Working
While other sectors have been able to change the way they operate to offer better work-life balance, conventional thinking dictates that ag has to be a 24/7 job — such is the nature of our $8 trillion global industry. From a recruitment perspective, that’s anecdotally a problem. We have a recruitment and talent retention problem.
A 2019 survey by Talent Harvest reported that 71.43% of agribusinesses identified competition for talent and recruitment difficulties as their main headaches. And ag’s employee voluntary turnover rate is comparatively high against the national average (15%) with 56% of U.S. agribusinesses reporting turnover rates of 10% or greater.
Anything that can make our sector more attractive is welcomed, not least given that the best talent is increasingly college-educated. This means competition for technology or finance skills (for instance) are in hot demand. With that greater focus on graduate-level skills comes different expectations about how our industry must operate.
For all the ills and the hardships it’s brought for many, COVID-19 has blown 24/7 conventional thinking out of the window. The pandemic has shown us that digital-provisioned flexible working practices can be applied to almost any segment. That can only be a good thing that’ll help ag attract the sort of talent that’ll take our sector to the next generation.
We mustn’t lose sight of that. What attracts talent, will bring innovation with it.
We’re Becoming Hooked on Digital Communications
I am no longer a young farmer, and, in my twenties, I was never an early adopter of the “new and shiny tools and trinkets” in our industry. As times changed so did I, in fact so much so that I came to thrive from these changes and become enthusiastic about them.
Back in the 1980s, I distinctly remember a moment my wife purchased an IBM computer. Her words were, “this will revolutionize how we keep records and manage our business.” It did raise my eyebrows at the time, but I was too busy farming to give it much thought. Looking back now, we would be so far ahead if I would have just listened, but this time around I have not made these same mistakes.
Today, my working days have changed dramatically. Just this past Monday, I walked all of 15 meters to my new office in my home in rural Oklahoma and held multiple meetings using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, ON24, WebEx, and various other online meeting resources. All this is possible because of a 4G connection with farmers, growers, agronomists, crop consultants, and ag retailers strewn across Argentina, Brazil, the U.S., Europe, and South Africa.
This pandemic has forced an enormous change in our mindset around how we can communicate with one another in the ag industry. The younger tech-savvy generation has grown up with this technology and expect instant communications. Today, based upon my life-learning from the lessons of the past many years, I could give them a run for their money with my knowledge of these communications platforms.
‘Change communication’ is here to stay — and for the better.
Will There Be a Happy Medium Between Digital and F2F Communications?
There will come a time when the world will open back up and in-person communication will creep back in.
Like many among us, I’m craving face-to-face communications not just with distant loved ones, but with my business partners too. Unprecedented isolation has put the spotlight on how important in-person interactions are. Above all else, ag is a sociable industry and will always be based on a handshake and meeting-and-greeting in person.
This all makes sense. We’re all well-aware of the trust deficit in our industry. Trust is best forged through one-on-one relationships built up over time. This is no different to how any relationship is built in any other part of your life or in any other industry. After all, you don’t divulge your entire medical history or trade secrets to a stranger from the get-go.
Getting to this point takes time and effort — and ultimately, face-to-face time. So it’s important that these new shiny bits of technology are applied usefully for, say, the grower, and the right channel of communication is applied at the right time.
Where the new tech will fit in is after trust has been established. Face-to-face will be responsible for starting, building, and maturing relationships, tech’s role will be to nurture those established relationships. In the longer-term, it’s entirely reasonable to suspect that digital communications may play a role in initiating relationships with younger folks too. How that may pan out remains to be seen and even today, it is in such a state of dynamic change.
Tech will also have a role for specific purposes such as in my case, running two training courses online instead of the one restricted by travel. Which again, will benefit our younger generations entering ag by feeding their desire for upskilling and training.
A Digital Ag Future Can Be Attractive for Talent
Ag is undergoing a rapid tech-led digital transformation, which a year ago might have been labelled unrealistic. But it’s not just that this tech awakening will improve ag in the strong line items such as operationality. It helps improve the softer (and equally important) line items like workplace satisfaction, flexibility, and upskilling as well.
Thanks to tech, we’re seeing a modern, flexible ag sector emerge that can attract a global workforce. Here, it’s important to note that ag is not just competing with itself but with other sectors too — for example, ag might compete with Google for AI technicians. Unless ag can be competitive in the softer line items, it’ll struggle to attract the very best graduates.
Being able to attract the best talent by removing recruitment and retention barriers will drive much needed sector-wide innovation. After all, we need more fresh thinking today than ever before to tackle challenges on the horizon, such as supply chain sustainability, agtech integration, shifting consumer dietary habits, or overall traceability of our food sources.
While we may be comparatively late to the party, our sector has shown for millennia just how resilient it is. I’m sure we can more than make up for lost time.
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