“If you believe in your heart that you need to do something, and you know in your heart it’s right… and especially when you’re in a position to make the change, you can’t back away from it,” Alison Mirams
As reported in the Stock and Land “Dairy Australia has launched a national marketing campaign to attract new workers to the industry, after a survey found 25 per cent of farmers were unable to find labour or access workers with the required skills.
The survey found 22pc cent of farmers were unable to fill vacant positions, within three months, and 40pc had lost one, or more staff, in the 12 months prior to the survey.
I truly hope it is successful and I would be very interested to see how Dairy Australia plan to monitor and evaluate its success. What ROI are they predicting?
I am sceptical as my experience agrees with Dr Nicole McDonald and her team and their excellent research that helps address the elephant in the room “Career development and agriculture: we don’t need a marketing campaign”
Yesterday I attended a construction industry event. The key note was Alison Mirams ( awesome speaker, highly recommend) Agriculture got a mention as an industry like construction not as ready to embrace 21st century challenges as it could be
The conversations were interesting. Despite the keynote being a woman and the industry recognising attracting and retaining women could help address its workforce shortage ( 12.7% of construction industries people are women – same as 35 years ago) the sponsor representative used predominantly male language – “the guys in hi vis” the “blokes in the offices”
The Australian construction industry is in crisis. There are some startling stats beyond escalating costs of production ( I discovered the construction industry talks about REO costs like agriculture talks about fertiliser costs)
Stats like 1550 insolvencies and high rates of suicide (190 ppl) per annum are heartbreaking. Young construction workers are ten times more likely to die by suicide than die from a workplace accident on a construction site.
Alison is on a mission to change the Culture Standard and is the chief crusader for the industry to have a 5 day working week.- Project 5 – A weekend for every worker Her message is “People are our Greatest Resource”. When we look after the health and wellbeing of our people they will be more productive and she is working with the University of NSW to measure this. It hasn’t been easy with 75 rain days between Jan and July seeing a 54% productivity drop.
Getting back to the dairy industry and agriculture in general, my personal experience and 20 years of working with young people in the sector and in schools has shown me people want rewarding jobs where they feel the work they do makes a difference and they are valued for their contribution. In a world where young people’s career choices are more and more driven by their values I think Alison Mirams has got it right. We need to start with the elephant in the room – if you are going to employ people then firstly you need to be prepared to gain the 21st century skills that will earn your business top marks for “GREAT PLACE TO WORK”
We need to understand what drives people to make the career decisions they make.
Before we start spending mega bucks on marketing campaigns lets all ensure our industries are them image we want the world to see
We need to show we care.
In reality lets be honest the first stage ( not the last stage) would be upskilling employers ( see Dairy Australia stage process below )
It doesn’t matter what industry we are currently in there is a scarcity of labour in an overemployed market and I was heartened yesterday by the number of times the panel mentioned the power of collaboration
“If you believe in your heart that you need to do something, and you know in your heart it’s right… and especially when you’re in a position to make the change, you can’t back away from it,” Alison Mirams
Extract of article from Stock and Land
The campaign would promote the benefits of working in dairy farming and encourage Australians to explore a job in dairy.
Featuring dairy ambassador Jonathan Brown and seven dairy farmers, the campaign showcases why working in dairy matters, highlighting factors that have been shown to motivate people to consider a job in dairy.
“Competition for jobseekers in regional areas is fierce, so finding good, reliable people is a priority for dairy farmers,” Ms Ingham said.
“Keeping them is just as important.
Ms Ingham said coronavirus had an impact on both international and cross-border workers.
“Because there is such a range of jobs on dairy farms, closing international and state borders really stopped that flow of employees across the nation,” she said.
“Dairies are traditionally a place for that backpacker market and it burst quite quickly.”
DA looked to local markets but found many potential workers didn’t know what was required on farms.
Ms Ingham said the advertising campaign was the first step in a four-pronged approach to attracting, and retaining, workers.
“We’re going out into regional areas looking for non-traditional workers in the dairy industry, so not necessarily poaching from the beef or sheep farm, next door,” she said.
This would be followed by career education about dairy for school, university and TAFE students.
“The third and fourth parts are around supporting our farmers, connecting them with job agencies and places where there are job seekers,” she said.
“We’ll also be skilling the job agencies, so they know about dairy, and then connecting our farmers into those networks.”
The last stage would be skilling farmers in how to employ new staff
“Farmers are often getting into farming, or even succession, because they love the outdoors, putting food on the table for the nation and animals – not necessarily to employ people.”.
DA was also setting up a pre-employment program, she said.
“We are working with those job agencies and networks, in terms of making sure that anybody who hasn’t been on a farm, or who has very little experience on farms, gets those really core skills,” she said.
“Once they land on dairy farms, they have got some of those basic skills, in terms of a skill set they need.”
