Project overview
This project involves research into the cost of turnover on Australian dairy farms and development of robust and practical measures of workforce retention that can be used in evaluating the impact of Dairy Australia’s interventions whilst encouraging a greater focus on retention of people in the dairy industry.
This research will be used to communicate to dairy farmers and farming systems researchers about the cost and productivity implications of staff turnover and provide metrics for individual farm businesses, regions and the national industry to measure, track and report on retention performance. These can be used to evaluate change on farm.
Project objectives
- Develop a relevant and easy to use method to measure turnover rates on farms that can be tracked over time and collected at-farm, at regional and/or national scale.
- Assess and choose a relevant method for measuring the cost of turnover on-farm and then apply this method to collect cost of turnover figures from a purposive sample of case study farms.
- Consider and assess different options for tracking the retention of particular cohorts of interest to the industry (e.g. trainees, senior managers, overseas workers).
- Provide recommendations to farm business management and workforce development initiatives in the dairy industry on how to best measure, intervene in and track retention.
Project outputs
- Establish the cost of employee turnover on a sample of dairy farms.
- Identify a measure of turnover that can be calculated at the farm level so that farmers, regional groups and the national industry can measure and track retention.
These outputs will be used by the NCDEA, The People in Dairy and the National workforce development plan (regional pilots) to:
- communicate turnover costs to farmers (i.e. help farmers understand the cost:benefit to farm management from improved people management);
- engage more farmers in considering their retention performance, support farmers and the dairy industry to measure and track retention (from dairy trainees through to senior managers); and
- report progress in retention for evaluation purposes.
Results
- Thirty farms across SA, TAS, NSW and VIC were interviewed and metrics for turnover calculated and discussed.
- Farms varied in their employment strategies with 4 types described as: 1. short-term employee strategies (e.g backpackers); 2. family farms with 1 employee as an assistant; 3. large corporate-style farms with a mix of experienced and high-turnover assistants; and 4. larger farms with experienced managers and relatively stable employment. The perceptions of the costs and impacts from turnover differed with these different strategies.
- The turnover measures require some adjustment to be more meaningful for farmers and industry in tracking retention.
Case studies are being developed to support farmers address turnover issues based on the different strategies they have chosen.
Project Duration
1 July 2013–15 August 2014
Research Group Leader/Key contact
Dr Geoff Keuhne and A/Prof. Ruth Nettle
Contact details
A/Prof. Ruth Nettle
T: 03 8344 4581
E: ranettle@unimelb.edu.au
Partnership details
Funded by: Dairy Australia