Tips of the Month
2012
Month |
Tip |
|---|---|
| Start the New Year with focused, motivated employees |
2011
2010
2009 Tips
Month |
Tip |
|---|---|
| October | Negotiated Performance Appraisal (NPA) – A great tool to use with your employees |
| November | Top 10 things to do when managing your workers |
| December | Get ready for 2010 |
January 2012
Start the New Year with focused, motivated employees
The New Year is here! Have you taken time of your busy schedule to meet with your team leaders, supervisors, and middle managers to define this year’s performance expectations and goals? Also, this would be a good time to do an individual performance review and discuss opportunities for growth.
Discuss overall goals and expectations for your dairy first and then discuss specific goals for each area within the dairy that each one of your leaders/supervisors is responsible for. Discuss what needs to be done to achieve those goals, have them participate on that discussion, and finally develop a plan with your team on how to get there.
Finally, have your leaders convey these goals to the rest of the workforce. This can have a tremendous impact in people’s will to excel (motivation) and will help them stay focus on the tasks that will lead to high performance.
Also, if you didn’t do a performance evaluation with each of your leaders yet, this might be the time to do it. I always recommend using the Negotiated Performance Appraisal (NPA) developed by Dr. Gregorio Billikopf. Unlike the traditional approach, the NPA can help you jointly develop a plan for performance expectations and improvement with each employee. It will also allow you to plan on how to achieve those goals individually with each one of your team leaders. For more information on the NPA read my article from NE Dairy Business magazine called “A useful appraisal tool”.
The negotiated performance appraisal can be a great tool to use once or twice per year as a coaching tool with your employees. You will be able to improve people’s skills, define goals and expectations for them, and develop a succession plan for your operation with your key employees.
Always remember that your employees are your most important resource. They are a key driver of your dairy’s success or failure. Having these type of meetings with them will help you keep them motivated and focused on the tasks that will make your dairy more profitable.
Finally, having an outside consultant participating of these type of meetings can improve the efficacy of the meeting. Asking your veterinarian, nutritionist, or consultant to participate can be of great help. The language barrier with some employees may be an issue though, so having someone with experience in running these meetings that can speak the native language of your key employees can be an asset.
For more information on how to run a negotiated performance appraisal and what questions to ask please call me at 215-738-9130 or email me at felix@apndairy.com.December 2011
Follow these tips to maximize labor productivity
Labor is the most important resource you have in your dairy. Employees play a key role in the success of your dairy, so just as maximizing cow productivity is one of your primary goals, striving to maximize labor productivity should be as well.
Dr. Gregory Billikopf, from the Univ. of California defines productivity as:
PRODUCTIVITY = ABILITY (can do) + MOTIVATION (will do)
So how do we improve labor productivity according to this equation? Let’s look at each one of these two components individually:
Ability – Quite frankly there’s not much we can do about a person’s ability to do a job (or lack of ability) once we hire that person.
Whether is lack of physical ability or intellectual capacity, this person will most likely not be able to do the job to your expectations and there’s not much you can do about it (other than finding another job in the dairy for him/her).
A good example of this is what I sometimes see in dairies around the country with people that don’t have the physical ability to milk cows. If high cow throughput is a big target in the parlor, then a short, stocky, and unfit person most likely won’t get the job done to the manager’s expectations. This person won’t be able to reach the front teats of the cows, will be tired before the end of the shift, and will slow down other people in the parlor. Whose fault is this? The manager’s for hiring the wrong person for that job.
This is why it’s so important to take more seriously the selection process when hiring new employees. It doesn’t matter if you are hiring a milker or a herdsman, hiring the right person for the job is critical to the success of your operation and it should be taken very seriously
Motivation – Keeping employees motivated is the key driver of labor productivity. I have written extensively about this topic.
In one of these articles I share 5 tips on how to keep employees motivated/productive (read the article). These tips will help you keep your employees motivated, which consequently will help you:
1. Improve labor productivity
2. Reduce absenteeism (by 27% according to some studies)
3. Reduce turn over rate (by 31% according to some studies)
4. Improve efficiencies (by 51% according to some studies)
5. Reduce accidents at work (by 62% according to some studies)
The bottom line is if you want to improve labor productivity at your dairy, you need to focus on hiring the right people and keeping them motivated.
Related articles:
* Motivate employees without spending money –Hoards Dairyman (click here to read)
* Improve labor productivity – AgriNews (click here to read)
* Motivate employees by suing these two steps – Animal Science Monitor (click here to read)
* Keep employees performance high – July 2011 Tip of the Month
* 10 things to do when managing your workers – El Lechero/Progressive Dairyman (click here to read)
November 2011
When training feeders becomes a necessity
Do you think you are paying too much for feed? Do you think you and your nutritionist are doing everything possible to reduce feed cost and yet your IOFC keeps shrinking due to higher feed cost?
How much have you done with your feeders to ensure that they are doing their part? When was the last time you had a meeting with them and discussed high feed prices and defined goals and expectations for them? When was the last time your feeders went through a “feeder training”?
It’s surprising how many dairies still spend very little time working with their feeders to ensure that they are properly trained and understand the importance of their role in the dairy. These people control over 50% of the variable costs of the dairy and yet in some dairies very little, if any, time is spent monitoring their performance! It’s not just about reviewing diet and cow changes with them. We need to share feeding reports with them, and discuss the impact that their performance has in the dairies bottom line. Training feeders has become a necessity due to increase feed cost!
Here is an example of the impact that good feeder’s training can do in the bottom line profitability by reducing feed costs due to improved loading accuracy, feeding accuracy, better reading feed bunks, and reduced shrink losses. This table shows some of these benefits in a monthly and yearly base for different herd sizes. Average feed cost is calculated at $7.50/ cow per day based on current feed prices.
Train your feeders to reduce feed cost (example)
Training feeders can help... |
500 cows |
1,500 cows |
3,500 cows |
5,000 cows |
||||
Month/Year |
Month/Year |
Month/Year |
Month/Year |
|||||
Reduce shrink by 2.5% |
$2,813 |
$33,750 | $8,438 |
$101,250 | $19,688 |
$236,250 | $28,125 |
$337,500 |
Reduce feed refusals from 3% to 1.5% |
$1,688 |
$20,250 | $5,063 |
$60,750 | $11,813 |
$141,750 | $16,875 |
$202,500 |
| Reduce loading error from 2% to 1% | $1,125 |
$13,500 | $3,375 |
$40,500 | $7,875 |
$94,500 | $11,250 |
$135,000 |
Total Savings |
$5,625 |
$67,500 | $16,875 |
$202,500 | $39,375 |
$472,500 | $56,250 |
$675,000 |
Considered average feed cost = $7.50 / cow / day These numbers only consider lactating cows (dry cows and heifers are not included)
September 2011
Poor performance - Why it happens
Are you having problems with an employee’s performance and you can’t figure out why? Let me share with you the 3 main reasons why an employee may not perform to your expectations:
1-Lack of ability – This happens usually when the natural strengths of your employee don’t match with the abilities that are required to perform their current job. A very harsh but simple example of this is a person hired to milk cows that is very short, overweight, and gets tired after half an hour of milking cows. Is it his fault that he is not performing to your expectations, or yours for giving the person that job instead of something else at the dairy? Maybe this person is an excellent truck and tractor driver and can perform other jobs within your operation instead. Reduce the risk of having this type of problem at your dairy by defining job specifications and job descriptions for each job at the dairy.
2-Lack of skills – In this case, the person may have the abilities to perform the job to your expectations but may lack the proper training or techniques. It may also be that he doesn’t have the proper tools or resources to perform the job right. In this case, make sure that she is properly trained or re-trained by the right person (this could be a fellow worker trained to train others, a middle manager, or an outside trainer hired to do this job). Also, as a manager, ensure that your employee always has the right tools to excel at his/her job. Example: A feeder can’t feed all pens at the same time every day if the TMR mixer is not properly maintained and is constantly breaking. He may have a back up mixer, but if this one is smaller, or not well maintained either, then feeding time expectations will not be met.
3-Lack of will to perform / lack of motivation – There could be different reasons why this person is not motivated to perform to your expectations. Maybe he has been doing the same job for over 4 years and needs a change, maybe he is having issues at home, or maybe you are not doing enough to help spark his own internal motivation. For more information on how to keep employees motivated read some of my previous articles that you will find under the “ARTICLES” link on my website.
Bottom line, identify the specific reason your employee is not performing to your expectations and define a plan to help him/her succeed at the job. Also, communicate with them to let them know that they are not performing to your expectations and help them identify the problem. Set up a deadline of when things will be reviewed and what decision will be made if things don’t improve.
August 2011
Running effective meetings - Follow this structure to run effective meetings with your key employees
Good communication is crucial for the success of your dairy operation. Good communication with your employees will strengthen your relationship with them and among them, will improve performance, and will motivate employees to do a better job.
A very effective way of communicating is through meetings. These meetings can be informal, formal, short, long, or a combination of all of the above. The point is to take the time to meet with employees to address their issues and keep them motivated. This will always result in better employee productivity.
Unfortunately, many dairy managers or owners have meetings with employees only when there is a problem or things are going poorly. This can create a negative atmosphere within the workers. Instead, having meetings consistently and periodically to share good news, successes, and keep employees focused and on track will help people stay motivated and more productive.
I know, you might be thinking, meetings? What a waist of time! In fact, many dairy producers think that meetings are, not just a waist of time and ineffective, but that they can also create anger and confusion among employees. Meetings can certainly go wrong unless you can transform them into compelling, productive, and dynamic activities. The rewards of having successful periodic meetings with your employees are tremendous. You can improve people’s morale, make better and faster decisions, improve labor productivity, and most importantly improve the bottom line performance and profitability of your dairy.
How often should you meet with middle managers or key employees? To answer this question I will share with you a structure of meetings that works very well in the dairies that have adopted them. These meetings have improved communication with and among middle managers and/or key employees of these dairies. I originally adapted this structure from Patrick Lencioni, author of the book “Death by Meeting”:
Meeting #1 - The daily check-in: This in fact is the most common form of meeting I see in the Ag industry. This type of meeting requires that team members (middle managers and/or key employees) gather together, standing up, for about 5 to 10 minutes every morning to report to the owner or manager on their activities for the day. These daily check-ins are useful to help team members know what each one is doing, helps avoid confusion about what the priorities are for the day and who’s in charge of what, and also helps ensure that no daily tasks fall through the cracks.
The challenge with these meetings is to keep them short, to the point, and consistent every day. Always do them at the same time and same place. Even if one team member or even yourself cannot make it one day, the meeting needs to take place.
Meeting #2 – The weekly tactical: The purpose of this meeting is to focus on issues that require immediate response. The structure is consistent every week and it requires the participation of all team members involved. This meeting should not last longer than 40 minutes and should include the following items:
- Top priorities/issues to deal with for the week: During the first 5 minutes every team member indicates their top 2 or 3 priorities for the week. This phase of the meeting is critical because it will set the tone for the rest of the meeting. It also helps team members stay informed of what goes on in the different areas within the dairy operation.
- Progress review: The next step on the meeting is for every team member or the owner to routinely report about the key performance indicators (KPI’s) within each area in the dairy (ie: parlor performance and milk quality numbers for the previous week, IOFC and other feeding management parameters, DOA’s, mortality rates, and other calf and heifer numbers, etc). These cannot be more than 3 KPI’s for each area within the dairy. The key here is to get in the habit of reviewing progress relating to key performance indicators and goals, but not every metric available. A longer, big picture, more detailed discussion of these numbers should take place during the “Monthly strategic meeting”.
- Real-Time agenda: Once the top priorities and KPI’s have been reviewed it is time to talk about what’s in the agenda. The agenda will actually come up from the discussion during the first stage of the meeting (Top priorities/Issues). Based on the topics shared by the team during the first 5 minutes of the meeting, the manager needs to list the topics by order of priority and discuss accordingly. Example: The fresh cow manager reports an increased mortality rate of fresh cows due to DA’s. Certainly this will be the first topic or one of the first topics to discuss. An assessment of the situation and action plan need to take place during the discussion of each topic.
It is important to have each team member be specific and not take much time during the first round of information when describing issues or tasks to deal with that week. Also, identify topics that are more strategic and write them down to be discussed during the monthly meeting. All topics during the weekly meeting should be tactical and only issues to be addressed during the week should be discussed.
Meeting#3 – The monthly strategic: This meeting should take between 1 to 2 hours, and the topics to discuss should be more strategic about the business, trends, goals, etc. It is important that the manager establishes an agenda before the meeting, with the input from key employees or middle managers, regarding topics to be discussed during the meeting. At least the first half hour of this meeting must be used to review in more detail all performance indicators of the dairy. The leader or manager of each area of the dairy must report and explain numbers, issues, and trends. Then, each area leader must share plans and actions that need to get done in order to achieve goals already established for each area.
It is always recommended to have your veterinarian, nutritionist, financial advisor, and any other consultant that works with your dairy/s attend the monthly meting. They are a key part of your team and will always have good ideas, advice, and input on many of the topics to be discussed.
Finally, here are some tips or guidelines of how to run meetings more effectively:
- While discussing key topics don’t get off track.
- Don’t allow people to interrupt, monopolize the discussion, or have side
conversations. - Always start on time. Even if there’s people missing. And stick to a time limit.
- Always take notes and have an action plan after the meeting.
- Keep track of important topics for the next meeting.
- Don’t use meetings to review an individual’s performance. Never criticize employees
during the meeting. Schedule a separate meeting with that employee instead. - Get everyone to participate and share their inputs and ideas.
- Close with an action plan. Everyone must leave the meeting knowing the next step.
In summary, follow this 3 step meetings with your key employees and/or middle managers to successfully communicate with them. These meetings will also help your key employees stay focused on the issues and priorities of your dairy, and will help them better communicate between each other.
July 2011
Keep employees performance high. Follow these 5 steps.
Managing front line workers is a very important responsibility. As a manager it is your job to ensure that people do their work the way it is required in a timely and consistent fashion.
Thus, your ability as a supervisor will be measured by what your workers do, not by what you do. This means that for example, if you are a parlor supervisor, your success will be evaluated by how fast parlor operators milk cows, or by how well they are prepping cows before attaching units.
So if you want to succeed as a supervisor you need to help your people succeed. You need to keep them motivated; give them a sense of ownership of their job, and make them feel part of the team.
If you want to succeed as a supervisor I suggest you follow my top 5 things to always do to keep your workers motivated:
1-Eliminate any frustrations or roadblocks – Pay special attention to the needs of your stars or high performers. Often times excellent workers leave a job because of frustrations that their direct bosses were not able to resolve for them. Examples of these are:
- When they don’t get all the necessary tools to perform their job on time.
- When poor performance is tolerated and high achievers like them feel taken advantage of.
- When high performers are underutilized.
- When they are not rewarded/compensated according to their performance.
2-Define clear goals and expectations – In order to make your workers accountable, the first step is to spell out expectations up front and in clear terms. How is their performance evaluated? For example, what is the loading accuracy expected for each batch of TMR feed they prepare? What is your goal? Do you have a goal for shrink loss of each ingredient in the TMR? Remember that your goal as a supervisor is to ensure that every worker knows exactly what is expected of them, what they are suppose to do, and how they are suppose to do it.
3-Monitor and document performance, and give them feedback – Keeping detailed notes and tracking each worker’s performance will help them achieve your expectations and goals. Keep track of who comes on time and who comes late to work. Check parlor performance numbers like milk flow in the first minute, or cows per hour (these are performance parameters that will evaluate a group of people working the same shift). Also, ask around a little, talk to co-workers and other managers about interactions with specific employees.
Don’t forget to give honest feedback. Based on my experience, lack of feedback is the number one thing that front line workers complain about when I ask them what would they like their manager to do better. Depending on your management style you will find different ways of giving feedback to your employees. Whether it’s by having daily conversations with your workers, or posting feeding performance data daily, or meeting with each employee monthly, it is absolutely critical to let your workers know how they are doing. Go to my website at www.apndairy.com to find more information about what to monitor for each job at the farm and how to give better feed back to your emloyees.
4-Define the rules of the game – Every dairy operation should have an employee handbook with a short but clear list of rules / policies that every employee should follow. It is also important to clearly define what are the consequences of not abiding to those rules.
5-Correct failure and reward success – Do you have anyone in your team not performing to your expectations? If so, what are you doing about it? Sometimes, I see that part of the reason why some people underperform is because this person was not properly trained, or the supervisor didn’t take enough time to coach this person, or because the employee never received the necessary tools to succeed. If this is one of those cases then get to work. If it’s not, then you will have to have a conversation with that person and discuss the seriousness of the case. Establish a plan and deadline of how things will be improved after which a decision will have to be made whether that person should stay with the dairy or not.
On the other hand, whether it’s through bonus programs, or special perks, or schedule preferences, or all of the above, make sure that high performers are properly rewarded and compensated for their hard work.
The bottom line is: don’t manage people “by special occasion”, instead solve small problems before they turn into big problems. What’s important is keeping periodic and consistent communication with every employee, as well as monitoring,
measuring, and documenting performance of each employee. This will keep people motivated and focused on their tasks.
June 2011
Follow these five tips to successfully implement a newborn calf program
Top dairy managers realize the importance of having a good newborn calf program to the success of the dairy enterprise. This is why they usually work with their veterinarians, nutritionist, and consultants to develop newborn calf programs and systems that will help them reduce DOA’s (Dead on arrival), and mortality and morbidity rates during the first week of the calf’s life.
However, having the best newborn calf management program doesn’t guarantee the best performance numbers. The proper implementation of the program is a critical aspect to the success of any system; of which, labor plays a key role. This is where I spend most of my time when working with dairies in reducing DOA’s and calf mortality during the first week of life.
Here are some tips of things you should do to improve your newborn calf management at your dairy:
1-Develop good SOP’s – This is a critical part of the program. This may seem time consuming, but it will bring a lot of benefits. SOP’s will reduce errors and variation between employees. Have your key and/or most experienced employee help you develop these SOP’s. If you have Spanish speaking employees make sure that you translate protocols into Spanish. These SOP’s will be also very helpful during training of any new employee. Some of the critical SOP’s that should be part of any newborn calf program are:
* Calving assistance – This should include when to move cows to individual pens, how long should they wait to assist cows and heifers, tools and materials they should use, when to call for help, etc.
* Calf care during first hours – How soon should they move the newborn calves? What are the first steps they should take with a newborn calf? How should they report a newborn calf? Etc.
* Colostrum management & feeding – Storing and thawing colostrum, evaluating colostrum quality and defining what to do depending on it’s quality, time of feeding, tubing calves, and other calf treatments.
* Newborn calf evaluation – Define standard procedure of what to look for, and how to report this.
For more information on how to write your own SOP’s or for assistance to develop customized SOP’s for your dairy visit www.apndairy.com or go to Dr. Leadley’s website at www.atticacows.com.
2-Define a training program – This is a key part of the success of any program. A good training program will reduce the chances of costly mistakes from new employees, and it will also ensure consistency among employees taking care of newborn calves. Have your consultant and veterinarian help you develop a good training program and make sure that everyone involved in the training of new employees is properly trained as well. In other words, train the trainer, or else the training will fail. Also, the training should be done in the native language of the employees. For more information on training programs for newborn calf care employees go to this link (www.apndairy.com/Services_TrainingPrograms)
3-Define clear goals and expectations – In order to make your workers accountable, the first step is to spell out expectations up front and in clear terms. How is their performance evaluated? For this, I recommend developing a series of simple but yet effective Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). You should be able to monitor these KPI’s daily and they should have an impact on performance and profitability of your dairy. Examples of KPI’s would be DOA’s (preferably broken down by employee), weekly or monthly calf mortality rates, weekly or monthly treatment costs, etc. It is crucial that every employee understands the importance of these KPI’s and the impact that their job have in each one of them. Furthermore, it is your job as a manager to give them all the necessary tools to succeed at their job.
4-Communicate with your employees periodically – Communicate at least weekly with the employees involved in newborn calf care and feeding. Refresh importance of their job, share performance numbers with each one of them, and ask them questions about the job, their issues, and things you can do to help them succeed. Also, giving feedback is a crucial part of the success of your program. Don’t wait to talk to your people only when performance numbers are not good. Let them know if their DOA’s are going very well, or the calf mortality rates are better than ever. This will help them stay motivated and focused on their tasks.
5-Correct failure and reward success – Do you have anyone in your team not performing to your expectations? If so, what are you doing about it? On the other hand, whether through bonus programs, or special perks, or schedule preferences, or all of the above, make sure that high performers are properly rewarded and compensated for their hard work. In some instances, a team approach may be required if you are not able to evaluate individual performance. In some cases, you may be able to identify performance of the day crew and the night crew separately. This will help you reward the teams that are doing very well and retrain the teams that are not. Furthermore, you can use this information to identify if the problems are coming from your night shift, or vice versa.
By taking these steps you will be able to improve the chances of success of your newborn calf care program. Remember not to manage “by special occasion”, instead address small problems soon before your DOA’s skyrocket. Finally, keeping periodic and consistent communication with every employee, as well as monitoring and documenting performance will help address problems as they come up.
May 2011
Employee Handbooks - Why do you need them and what should they look like.
Every dairy operation has it’s own rules and policies. However, few communicate these properly to their employees. The employee handbook is an effective way of documenting policies and procedures, as well as communicating expected standards of performance and conduct.
The employee handbook is also a great tool to use during the orientation of new employees by providing information about the history of the dairy, information about the facilities, about salary structure and compensation policies, and other important things that should be communicated within the first week of work to all new employees at the dairy.
The employee handbook can also be a tool to avoid liability with employee problems. It is important that dairy employers clearly state policies against certain things like discrimination or harassment based upon sex and race. Also, having a policy stated about not hiring illegal aliens should be included in all employee handbooks.
Where do you begin?
Even if you never had an employee handbook for your dairy, you are already managing your employees based on informal or unwritten policies and rules. So the employee handbook would be a formalization of policies and procedures that already exist at your dairy.
Your employee handbook should have answers to the questions most frequently asked by your employees. This is why an effective employee handbook should at least have the following:
1. Introduction / Welcome section
2. History of your dairy
3. Mission and vision statements
4. Organizational chart
5. Equal employment opportunity policies (including immigration law compliance)
6. Employment and compensation policies
7. Employment benefits & time off policies
8. Discipline and termination policies (including cero tolerance policies for mistreating animals)
9. Safety policies
10. Company disclaimer
Always remember to go through the employee handbook (or at least through the important points) with new employees during their first week at work. If you are developing an
employee handbook for the first time, then call a meeting with all your employees to introduce the handbook and answer any questions.
Finally, it is important to review the handbook frequently (once per year) to ensure that it is updated with new or refreshed policies and practices of your dairy.
April 2011
The most common variables that affect the TMR mixing process.
While working on a presentation on feeding management for my trip to China this month, I thought of this month’s tip of the month, which is focused on the most common variables that affect the TMR mixing process.
I get to see a lot of different things when doing feeding audits around the country. I see all kinds of different types of mixers, different types of feeders, different types of feeding protocols, different types of loading sequences of ingredients, etc, etc…However, there are some common mistakes that I consistently see in many of the feeding audits I do.
This is why I decided to share with you my “Top 5 most common issues I see that affect the TMR mixing process”:
1. Wrong mixer selection – Or not having the adequate equipment for the type of mixer that was purchased. A few examples of this are:
- Tractor doesn’t have enough power for the size of mixer (usually it’s a vertical mixer, twin or three screws) and it’s run in low RPM’s because the tractor doesn’t have enough power. Therefore, the TMR is inconsistent and materials don’t get mixed up properly in spite of increasing the mixing time for that load (sometimes over 30 minutes).
SOLUTION: Prepare smaller batches of feed (if you have enough time during the day). Or ask the right questions before buying a new mixer to ensure that the mixer you purchase is the correct one for the type of equipment you have. Or buy a new and bigger tractor!
- The mixer cannot process hay or straw (most commonly seen with reel type or some horizontal auger type mixers)– It’s not a problem if you don’t feed any hay or straw. However, if your nutritionist or veterinarian tells you that you need to have hay or straw in the diet then it becomes an issue. When this happens, the TMR has big chunks of unprocessed hay or straw that are not properly mixed and cows can select more of what they want to eat. Consequently, there are more cases of subclinical acidosis, or more DA’s in fresh cows in spite of all the good “scratchy” forage that’s in the diet.
SOLUTION: Long particle size forages must be pre-processed before loading in the mixer. You may also need to feed less of these long particle size forages to improve TMR uniformity.
- Mixer is too small so the mixer is always overloaded when feeding the largest pens. Therefore, the ration is always variable. A good indicator of this is when we see unmixed material in the feed bunk (ie: big chunks of hay, more steam flaked corn in some sections ofthe feed bunk than in others, TMR is wetter in some sections than in others because the whey, water, or liquid molasses not getting properly mixed throughout the entire batch, etc.).
SOLUTION: Make 2 batches of feed instead of one for the largest pens, or three instead of two, or four instead of three (you know what I mean…). Depending on the type of mixer, never go above 95% of struck capacity for vertical mixers, 75% for horizontal auger mixers, and 70% for reel type mixers.
2. Inconsistent mixing times –
- For the same feed, mixing time should be exactly the same every time. Often, because the feeder is on the phone or is distracted by another employee, a batch that should have taken 15 minutes to mix takes 25 minutes or more instead. Other times, because of lack of protocols, the feeder leaves the mixer running while he goes to get more hay or straw for the next batch. Needles to say, that batch of feed will be different than the one he prepared before because one took 15 minutes compared to the 30 minutes that took him to finish the second batch. Consequently, the pen fed the last load will get a ration with over processed forages and therefore with more risk of causing rumen health problems.
SOLUTION: Monitor feeders performance by using feeding management software and give them more and better feedback. Also, develop feeding protocols and spend time and money training your feeders. Explaining the why’s of things, reminding them about the importance of their role for the dairy’s profitability, and the importance of being consistent are critical.
3. Poor mixer and equipment maintenance –
- Because of lack of protocols and schedules for equipment maintenance, often times knives are not sharp and therefore, hay is not processed properly. This leads to more selection and sorting by the cows and more rumen health issues if not adjusted in time. Also, dull kicker plates that are not close enough to the mixer wall can create dead spots inside the mixer and feed doesn’t get properly mixed. Other examples are when tractors break in the middle of the feeding process, or the liquid applicator gets clogged up or breaks, etc.
SOLUTION: Talk to your equipment dealer to find out about the best maintenance program for your equipment. Develop a maintenance protocol and a schedule for changing or working on knives, kicker plates, filters, etc. Assign someone to be in charge of the maintenance program and held him/her accountable.
4. Incorrect loading sequence –
- Loading sequence is critical for the proper mixing of all ingredients. Improper loading sequence will cause variability in the TMR. Sometimes, due to incorrect loading sequence, forages don’t get processed enough, or small inclusion rate ingredients are not blend uniformly.
SOLUTION: Work with your nutritionist, external consultant, and feeders to evaluate and define the best loading sequence based on the type of mixer, forages, and ingredients used at your dairy. The loading sequence may need to be re-evaluated if ingredients used in the diet change.
5. Not addressing forage variability immediately –
- This is common to see when feeders don’t pay attention to details or don’t communicate well with their supervisors. Maybe the hay quality has changed, or the haylage pile is now more wet or just looks different and the feeder doesn’t notice the difference, or does but doesn’t do anything about it. Many times, lack of proper training or lack of communication with the feeders is the cause of this. The lack of attention to forage and ingredient changes can cause simple, but yet expensive problems like a drop in milk production, or more serious health and fertility issues like the ones caused by mycotoxin contamination of forages, or butyric fermentation of silage fed to cows even for just a few days.
SOLUTION: Training and coaching your feeders is crucial. Your feeder must realize immediately when forages or any other ingredient changes. Formal training of what to look for in forages and ingredients, how to communicate when forages change, and running dry matters using a Koster tester are a critical part of the success of your feeding program.
Evaluate these common variables of the mixing process at your own dairy and make sure that you are not having any of these issues. Get outside support from your consultants to better coach and train your feeders to avoid some of these common problems during the mixing process.
March 2011
The first day at the job – Top 10 things to have ready for the orientation day
The orientation program is one of the most neglected functions in most dairy operations. Most of the time, new employees are left to gain knowledge and skills on the go without access to proper formal orientation and training. This results most of the time in unproductive employees that don’t care much about the dairy and end up leaving within the first year.
Always remember that first impressions are crucial. Just as you are forming an impression about your new employee, he or she is doing the same of you and your dairy. This is why it’s so important that, during the first days of work, managers and owners take the necessary time to work and orient the new employee to their new job and the dairy.
- Develop an effective orientation program and you will be able to:
Create a positive attitude and job satisfaction among your new employees - Better align what people do to what you expect them to do.
- Reduce labor turn over
- Reduce start up cost by reducing costly accidents or mistakes
- Save time for you and your managers
This is why it’s so important to spend time planning out the first days of work before the new employee arrives. The top 10 things that you will need to have ready for the orientation day are the following:
- A mission statement, vision, and history of your dairy – This will be part of the introduction to the dairy and will help create a sense of belonging to the new employee. He/she will value your operation more!
- Job specifications and description – Very important to be able to better orient and train the new employee on what needs to be done and what it takes to get it done.
- Employee handbook – Every dairy operation needs to have a simple, but yet complete employee handbook with all the necessary information for people that work at the dairy (for more information about preparing an employee handbook contact me at felix@apndairy.com).
- Standard operating procedures (SOP) – Every employee needs to do the job the same way. SOP’s will help during the training process and will promote job consistency among employees.
- Organizational chart – The new employee needs to know who will they be reporting to, who the managers are, who’s in charge of what, and what the chain of command looks like.
- Layout of the facilities and barns – Very useful during the orientation. Every new employee should have one.
- Housing accommodations should be ready – Have their room ready and clean. Make sure you also have house rules in place and that these are included in the employee handbook. What are the expenses covered by the farm? Which are the ones they need to cover themselves?
- Have a trainer/buddy assigned – This person will not only be your trainer but, also your ambassador of the dairy. Define who’s the right candidate for this job and train him or she. Use outside consultants to help you train your trainer if necessary. Define step-by-step and day-by-day what your trainer needs to do and accomplish with the new employee. Train the trainer!
- A formal training program of proper cow handling techniques – No matter how much experience the new employee has, every new employee needs to go through a basic training on cow handling techniques.
- Training on safety – Every new employee needs to go through basic training on safety. Safety when being around animals, forage bunk safety, equipment safety, the use chemicals, and manure pit / lagoon safety.
Finally, hire an interpreter if your trainer or buddy cannot do the translation when you hire Spanish-speaking employees. Both the orientation and training program of new employees needs to be done in the native language of the worker.
So remember, the first days on the job can set the tone for an employee’s experience at your dairy. Usually, new employees will be more receptive and eager to learn during the first days at the new job, so make sure that you and your supervisors do their best to make these first days a great experience for them.
February 2011
Parlor efficiency – What affects it and how can you improve it?
How do you measure parlor efficiency? Does having less milkers means my parlor is more labor efficient? Am I paying too much to my milkers and that makes my parlor labor efficiency poor? These are some of the questions I usually get from clients that are looking to improve parlor performance and efficiency.
Last year I surveyed 6 different dairies where I did parlor audits and milker training schools, and evaluated parlor efficiency. All 6 dairies had fairly modern parallel or herringbone parlors and varied in cow numbers from 380 to 3,000. All dairies were located in the North Eastern United States (Pennsylvania, New York, and Vermont) except for one which was located in New Mexico.
From this survey and personal experience, I believe that there are 3 factors that affect parlor efficiency the most. Of the three only one have to do with labor. These main factors are:
1. Cow numbers – The more cows that need to be milked the more diluted parlor operating costs will be.
2. Average milk production per cow – As shown in the data from my survey, the higher the individual milk production the more we can reduce labor cost per cwt.
3. Milking speed – This is the one factor that is labor related. By constantly working and training milkers at the dairy we can have a positive impact on parlor efficiency.
Let’s pay particular attention to this last point. The bottom line is how fast can we get cows milked and the best way to keep track of this parameter is by monitoring both:
• Cows / hour or turns / hour
• Number of cows milked / milker per hour
As showed in the table below, dairies with the highest number of cows milked per milker per hour were the most labor efficient. We can see from this data that the most efficient dairy is the one from New Mexico with only $0.22 of labor cost per cwt, followed by one of the dairies from New York with a labor cost per cwt of $0.47.
For any of these parameters it is important to set up your own benchmarks and goals according to the type and size of your parlor. Also, geographical area, weather conditions, and other factors will have an impact when defining those goals.
However, don’t focus only on milking speed. Milking quality, attention to the cows while milking, and adequate udder prepping and milking routine are crucial to the success of your milking program as well.
What should be monitored when it comes to parlor efficiency? - The two parameters that I always suggest monitoring on a monthly base are:
1-Labor cost / cwt – It’s hard to compare large dairies from the West coast to dairies in the North East because of cow numbers. However, it is important to define your own goals based on where your dairy stands today. Some dairies in the North East have been able to obtain numbers under $0.50 of labor cost per cwt throughout 2010. As seen on the table, it’s not about pay salary but most importantly how many cows can each milker milk in 1 hour. A reasonable target, in some dairies with a full milking routine, could be between 70-75 cows per milker per hour. In dairies with minimal prepping procedures targeting around 140-150 cows per milker per hour wouldn’t be unreasonable.
2-Pounds of milk / stall per hour – This is an excellent parameter to evaluate parlor efficiency. Once again base your benchmarks and goals according to your herd size, type of parlor, and individual milk production per cow. See table to compare dairies from my survey.
Finally, push your milkers to keep a fast pace while in the parlor. However, always remember that it’s important to have a good balance between speed and quality of work. This balance may differ according to the regional location of the dairy. A dairy in New Mexico will have a lot less health and environmental problems than a dairy in Pennsylvania or Florida. Also, the type of facilities, stalls, and bedding are important when it comes to defining the right milking routine and milking pace expected by your milkers. Expected employee turn over rate can also be of importance when defining those goals.
Consider all these factors when establishing your own milking program and setting parlor efficiency goals. Always discuss these with your veterinarian and external consultant.
Info |
Dairy 1 NM
|
Dairy 2 PA |
Dairy 3 PA |
Dairy 4 VT |
Dairy 5 NY |
Dairy 6 NY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Milking cows |
3000
|
1350
|
650 |
380 |
2,100 |
900 |
Ave. Milk/cow |
80
|
86,4
|
68,4 |
68 |
78,6 |
70 |
Stalls |
60
|
40
|
40 |
28 |
80 |
28 |
$ Labor/cwt |
$0,22
|
$0,65
|
$0,76 |
$0,70 |
$0,60 |
$0,47 |
Cows/milker per Hr |
143 |
56 |
46 |
51 |
67 |
75 |
Lbs milk/stall per Hr |
190,5 |
121,5 |
52,9 |
61,5 |
98,2 |
125 |
For more information about parlor efficiency please contact Felix Soriano at felix@apndairy.com.
January 2011
Tips for more effective delegation
As a dairy owner or manager, are you still feeding cows or treating fresh cows? Would you like to delegate these or other jobs and have more time to focus on other management issues at your dairy but you can’t because you feel you are the only one that can do these tasks right? If so, you are not alone. I see this happening in many dairies around the country independently of the herd size.
Like I always tell my clients, most likely there are people at your dairy that can do these jobs as well or even better than you can. Because many owners and managers are multitasking and trying to do too many things at the same time they end up not performing these jobs the way they would like. Instead, one of your employees that can focus on the task will be more dedicated, will pay more attention to detail, and will perform the task better if properly trained.
Delegating these jobs and other projects to people at the dairy can decrease your workload, allow you and your team to get more done on time, and can boost confidence in your people. Follow these tips for effective delegation:
1. Evaluate who is the right candidate for the job: This is a crucial step before delegating any job. Depending on the type of work you are delegating, the right candidate may be your herdsman, one of your milkers, your heifer feeder, etc. Most likely you will find someone in house capable of doing the job. Having a job description will help identify the right candidate.
2. Discuss the job with the candidate: Developing a good training program is very important to ensure that the employee understands the importance of the job, what needs to get done, how, when, and why it needs to be done that way.
3. Clearly define the task to be completed: Having SOP’s will help during the training process and it will ensure that the job gets done the same way every time.
4. Define a timeline: It should be stipulated from the beginning how long the job should take. Identify a timeline of how long the training period will last and another that specifies how long each task and entire process should take.
5. Identify checkpoints: Determine how often and when you will meet with the employee to review progress and offer guidance. Have these meetings more frequently at first; reduce frequency once you see the job is mastered. Also, identify key performance indicators that will be periodically monitored to provide better feedback to your employee.
Effective delegation can reduce your workload and help you improve performance and profitability of your dairy.
December
Feeding management - The 3 key drivers of success
Working in Idaho last week doing feeding audits and feeder schools inspired me to write this month’s “Tip of the month”.
From my experience working with many dairy feeders, I believe there are 3 key drivers of success when it comes to feeding cows. I called them the PAC drivers of success:
• Precision
• Attention to details
• Consistency
If feeders can focus and excel in these areas a successful feeding program is almost guaranteed.
Here are the details:
Precision – This is particularly important due to high feed cost and importance of feeding the right amount of each ingredient every time. Like I always tell feeders during the training schools, precision while feeding is crucial to the profitability of the dairy and to herd health.
It is very important for feeders to be very precise when loading ingredients in the mixer, mixing the feed the right amount of time, and dropping the right amount of feed in each pen.
What should you evaluate when looking at feeding software reports?
1. Loading error by feeder by ingredient – Define goals and expectations. Shoot to be under 1%.
2. Feeder work cost error – This report will show whether the feeder’s precision loading and handling ingredients is costing the dairy; or if it’s right on target based on forecasted feeding cost.
3. Mix time by date and batch of feed prepared – It’s all about precision feeding and mixing each batch of feed the right amount of time. While preparing a batch of feed the feeder must be focused on the loading and mixing process exclusively and should not be distracted by getting more hay, or cleaning feed bunks, etc while mixing.
4. Feeder drop error – Is your feeder feeding the right amount of feed to each pen? Target should be under 0.5% error per pen. If one pen consistently gets under fed by 3% for example, because that feeder tends to drop more feed in the first pen, then this can affect milk production by about 3 pounds a day in that pen!
For more information on evaluating feeder’s performance read my previous article at www.apndairy.com/Media_PubArticles.html.
Attention to details – Feeders by trait need to be detailed oriented and should focus on keeping a clean and organized feed, commodity, and forage storage area. Feed losses can be substantial in dairies where feeders don’t focus on keeping storage facilities clean and organized. Great, detailed oriented feeders always identify TMR variations between days, or within pens before herd health and performance is affected. They are always alert to any cow feeding behavior change or manure variability, and always maintain tractors, mixers, and other equipment in excellent condition.
Some feeders are better than others when it comes to attention to details, but everyone can be coached and trained to improve in this area. Also, having good processes in place can reduce the lack of attention to details from some feeders.
Consistency – This is the absolute key driver of success and profitability of any dairy operation. This relate to every task and process within the feeding program:
1. Start feeding always at the same time – Pen feeding order should always be the same and each pen must be fed always at the same time. Target a variation of +-5 minutes.
2. Mixing times should always be the same – Check mixing time per load on the reports, and ensure that they are always almost the same between loads, and between days.
3. Feed delivered at the feeding bunk should be the same as what’s on the nutritionist’s feeding program. Like I tell feeders, the feed delivered on Monday must look the same as the one delivered on Tuesday or Wednesday.
4. Push up feed always at the same time and the same number of times every day.
In summary, it is very important to create awareness among feeders of the importance of their role at the dairy. Sharing with them feeding costs and herd health information can be great motivators.
Developing reward programs focusing on consistency, precision, and accuracy can be beneficial in dairies that are already achieving very good results and want to take their feeding program to the next level.
For more information on feeding audits and feeder’s training programs please contact me @ 215-738-9130 or via email @ felix@apndairy.com.
November
Take advantage of good milk prices. They won't last long!
There are only a few more weeks left before the end of the year and milk prices remain strong. Take advantage of this now because they will most likely drop during the first quarter of 2011. This is the time to squeeze as much profits out of your cows as possible (without jeopardizing herd health).
Don’t look at feed cost alone when evaluating opportunities to improve your feeding program. Instead, focus on profitability by monitoring income over feed cost (IOFC) on a monthly base. IOFC is measured in dollars $ per cow per day and determines how much money is left to pay all other operating costs plus profit. This is the best parameter to evaluate the profitability of a feeding program and is calculated using the following equation:
IOFC ($/cow/day)= Milk Price * (Milk Production / 100) – Feed Cost
Even though reducing feed cost is essential for the success of any dairy operation, focusing on maximizing IOFC is a better approach for short term decisions.
Here are ten of the most important actions that you can take to improve IOFC at your dairy:
1-Make more milk – This is the key driver of profitability under the current market conditions. Work with your nutritionist and evaluate opportunities to improve your feeding program. There may be ingredients, additives, or supplements that could improve herd performance and you are not currently using. However, don’t implement any technology or products that will not give you an immediate return on your investment.
2-Improve components – Take advantage of the current milk fat and protein prices by feeding diets that will promote higher milk protein and butter fat.
3-Reduce Somatic cell counts – By doing so, your milk price will increase due to a better milk bonus, which will consequently increase IOFC . Not only that, but by reducing SCC, milk production per cow will also increase.
4-Promote higher dry matter intakes – DMI is a key driver of milk production. Any practice that can improve DMI should be evaluated. Some of the factors that will affect intakes are cow comfort (including feed bunk space available per cow), water availability, feed quality, number of feedings per day, number of times feed is pushed up in the bunk, etc.
5-Improve feed efficiency- There are many factors that will affect feed efficiency. Milk production per cow is the main one. Also, by getting cows pregnant in time, feed efficiency can be significantly improved due to herd’s lower DIM. This is because cows are more efficient converting feed to milk in early lactation, so cows with long lactations due to breeding problems can reduce feed efficiency of the herd. Also, feeding good quality forages and using feed additives, like yeast culture, will also improve feed efficiency.
6-Reduce shrink losses – By better controlling feed losses feed cost can be reduced and therefore IOFC improved. Although difficult to measure, shrink losses are dollars spent that will not generate any profits. Dairy managers should evaluate forage storage and feed-out practices and implement new technologies and practices that will reduce shrink losses in forages. Also, focusing on proper grain storage and handling techniques can result in reductions in shrink losses of considerable amount. For more information on reducing feed losses read my article on Hoards Dairyman called “Cutting feed cost begins at home”.
7-Reduce variability during feeding – Day to day feeding consistency is a key driver of profitability. Many factors will impact feeding consistency like feeder’s performance, the use of proper equipment, and the use of feeding management software. Also, new technology like the NIR feed analyzer that can be installed in the payloader bucket can help reduce variability in the diets between pens and batches of feed by adjusting amounts of forages and other ingredients fed based on the dry matters and nutrient contents.
8-Improve feed bunk management- Dairies with good feeding and feed bunk management can target lower feed refusals and therefore reduce feed cost. Also, consistency and uniformity in the amount and quality of the feed dropped in the bunk will have an impact on performance. See my article on “Cutting feed cost begins at home” for more information.
9-Monitor feeders accuracy and consistency- It is crucial to define key performance indicators like loading and feeding accuracy as well as feeding consistency and uniformity that will help your feeders stay in track. Furthermore, monitor performance and communicate with your employees by giving good, productive feedback about their feeding performance at least weekly. This can be beneficial to reduce feed cost and improve profitability. For more information on this topic read my article published in NE Dairy Business magazine called “Work with feeders to reduce feed cost, improve efficiency”.
10-Spend time and money training your feeders- Your feeders control more than 50% of the operating costs of your dairy. Work with your nutritionist and outside consultants that specialize in feeding management and can speak the native language of your employees. (See economic benefits of training feeders). Well trained, and skilled feeders can significantly improve your profits.
Finally, act now before milk prices drop. Evaluate if increasing milk production can have a positive impact in your IOFC and bottom line profitability. Furthemore, work with your nutritionist and external consultants to benchmark and set goals on what your dairy’s IOFC should look like for next year based on future milk and grain prices.
October
Improve profits by focusing on efficiency
Another rough year is awaiting us? At least that’s what first quarter indicators would suggest for next year. Lower milk prices combined with higher grain and commodity prices will make it challenging for dairy producers to make profits during the first half of 2011.
Certainly, risk management plans including milk and commodity marketing strategies are tools that can help producers better control their profits. Also, improving efficiencies at the dairy can help reduce costs and make more profits.
Here are my Top 5 areas that need close attention when it comes to improving efficiencies:
1. Maximize parlor performance and efficiency – How many milkers and cow pushers work in each shift at your dairy? What’s the operating cost of your parlor? Are there opportunities of reducing these costs? Can milk quality be improved? These are all factors that will affect parlor efficiency and overall profitability of the dairy.
Some of the parameters / indicators that should be monitored periodically are:
1. Pounds of milk / stall per hour
2. Labor cost / cwt
3. Cows / Hour or parlor throughout
4. SCC
For more information on improving parlor performance and efficiency read previous articles at www.apndairy.com/Media_PubArticles.html.
2. Maximize IOFC (Income over feed cost) – Feed represents more than 50% of the variable cost in any dairy operation. This is why IOFC is one of the most important parameters to monitor at least on a monthly basis.
What will help improve IOFC? Here are a few important factors:
1. Higher milk production
2. Lower feed cost
3. Better feed efficiency
4. Feeders accuracy and consistency
5. Feed bunk management
6. Better cow comfort
I will review each one of these in a future “Tip of the month”.
3. Improve the transition cow program – The pre-fresh and fresh cow stage are crucial for the success of any dairy operation. Cutting costs and corners in these two areas can be very detrimental to the profitability of any dairy. Important indicators of a good transition program are:
1. Cow comfort
2. DMI and feed quality
3. Good quality, properly trained, and with good “cow sense” labor
4. Keeping good records and monitoring systems
4. Get cows pregnant, fast – Measure the success of your breeding program by calculating pregnancy rates. This will be most affected by:
1. Good feeding program
2. Good heat detection
3. Good breeding program
4. Reducing calving and fresh cow problems
5. Maximize labor efficiency – Employees are the most important resource of any dairy operation. Labor efficiency can be measured in different ways. Number of cows per employee, labor cost per cwt, and pounds of milk sold per employee are the most typical. What can affect labor efficiency?
1. Wages
2. Labor productivity
3. Proper labor training
4. Keeping employees motivated
5. Monitoring labor performance
6. Giving feedback to employees
There are always opportunities of improving efficiency and profitability. Focus on these 5 areas by developing key performance indicators and setting goals for each area. Industry benchmarks can be used but it is always recommended to develop your own goals and benchmarks for your own dairy. Finally, work with your nutritionist, veterinarian, and consultants to develop these goals and expectations.
I will discuss each one of these five points in future tips of the month.
September
How to lead your team during unpredictable times
I hear many dairy owners and managers preach about the importance of “consistency” when it comes to managing a dairy. In fact I also preach about this when I talk to front line workers and employees working at any dairy operation.
But yet, some of those same managers and owners that preach about the importance of consistency, are the first to become inconsistent with their decisions and make unpredictable changes during unstable economic times. They typically ask their nutritionist to make changes in the diets without evaluating the effect that these changes will have on IOFC, or they may layoff employees without evaluating how these layoffs will affect herd health, labor morale and productivity, and bottom line profitability of the dairy.
Instead, what great dairy managers do is anchor themselves in ideas, plans, and goals that are solid, even during uncertain times like the ones we are living today. Great managers know and understand that the dairy industry has become very unpredictable but still they lead in a consistent manner and therefore, they get more predictable results.
How do they do it?
Great leaders follow these 4 things that lower performance managers don’t:
1. They define and focus on their top goals – There are 2 main issues that I typically find when working with some dairy managers. Either a-they don’t have any defined goals, and if they do they are not communicating them properly to the rest of the employees, or b-When they have goals that often times get distracted from their goals.
a. No defined goals: Too many dairies have no goals to speak of. In some instances the manager or owner may have a set of goals defined but when I ask the employees about those goals they look at me as if I were an alien. It is very important for any organization to have 1, 2 or 3 clear, well-defined measurable goals that can be shared with employees. Examples of well-defined and measurable goals can be found on my website @ www.apndairy.com. Of course, these goals will vary from dairy to dairy and it’s always recommended to have your key employees, nutritionist, veterinarian, and consultants involved when defining those goals.
b. Managers get distracted from the goals: Even if the goals are well defined, often times pressures of the day-to-day activities take over and managers and employees forget about the goals. It’s the leader/manager’s role to regularly emphasize the goals, rethink people’s jobs to help them achieve those goals, and minimize the distractions at work in order to better focus on the goals that need to be achieved.
In summary, the manager’s job starts with identifying the goal(s), communicating those goals, explaining them, and making sure that everyone understands them. There should only be 1, 2, or 3 well-defined goals and you may have different goals for different units within your dairy. For example: One or two main goals for calf feeders, one or two main goals for feeders, one or two main goals for milkers, etc.
2. Make sure everyone know what role they play and what they need to do to achieve those goals – Many times dairy managers set up goals but, they don’t define and communicate what needs to be done to achieve those goals. Good leaders will give employees all the necessary tools to succeed; including SOP’s, job descriptions, and any other tools necessary to achieve those goals. Also, great managers will involve team members in defining how those goals will be reached.
3. Keep score – It is essential to track measures that will lead to the achievement of the goals. There are two types of measures to track: lag measures and lead measures. Lag measures will tell us what happened and are the type of measures that managers usually look at on a monthly bases to evaluate the dairy overall. Instead, lead measures are predictive and can be influenced by people’s daily performance. Managers and employees can look at these measures daily, weekly, and/or monthly. Good managers focus on a few lead measures that the team can control and helps employees stay focused on them by monitoring those lead measures consistently. An example of these would be parlor throughput, milk flow, and milk per stall per hour. Combined, these are lead measures that will help milkers in each shift stay focused on their task and achieve their parlor performance and efficiency goals expected by the manager.
4. Set up a regular cycle of follow-through – Conduct regular meetings where both manager and employees are held accountable for achieving results. This is the time to ask and discuss about the goals and to refresh what needs to be done in order to achieve those goals. If these meetings are not done and goals are not discussed on a consistent basis then employees will quickly forget about them and won’t care.
The meetings should be conducted weekly and sometimes daily if necessary. Develop a scoreboard where team members can see where they are at in reference to their goals. Have employees discuss what changes they may have done or issues that they might have in reference to achieving those goals and plan what to do next.
Clearly, leading teams during unpredictable times is a difficult task in hand. Following these 4 steps will help you improve your leadership skills. Remember that it is not enough to announce your goals and expect people to be on board. To become a great leader you must engage your team to figure out the necessary measure to achieve those goals and then relentlessly monitor those measures.
August
Orienting the new employee – A weak spot in many dairies
What does your training program for new employees look like? Do you have one? If you do, does it consist of having one of your best milkers spending time with the new employee? Or is it the milker going back to Mexico in charge of training the new employee, who happens to be his/her brother or uncle? These people may have been your best milkers, but once they’ve given their notice, they won’t care much about your business anymore. This means that most likely they will do an incomplete and casual training of your new employee, and they may pass all their bad habits onto them.
Unfortunately, I see many employees fail and leave a dairy too soon because they never received a proper orientation and training. This is especially true with people that are working at a dairy for the first time and have little or no experience working with cattle and equipment.
This is why it is so important to spend some time planning out the first few weeks in as much detail as possible before the new employee starts. Independent of how formal or informal the orientation program is there are a few things that must be covered during the training period to ensure the success of the program.
Here are a few points that I consider very important to include in any orientation/training program for new employees at a dairy operation:
1. Designate a trainer / buddy – This can be a supervisor or employee who’s been doing the job for a long time and will be motivated by the idea of training a new employee. You may be tempted to select your best milker for this job, but many times this person may not be the best communicator or might not enjoy sharing information and knowledge with others. Training the trainer is a crucial step towards the success of any orientation program.
2. The first day at work – A tour of the dairy and house (when housing is offered), introduction to co-workers, and information about break areas, time cards, uniforms, and other items are usually covered during the first day at work. No work should be done this day, instead the manager along with trainer and supervisor should spend time with the new employee to share information about the dairy, history, mission, and vision of the company, house and work rules, expectations at work, review employee handbook, and fill out any necessary forms and information required by the dairy.
3. Second day at work – During the first days of work the shadowing program is recommended. This consists of having the new employee follow the assigned trainer for a few days in order to get the new employee accustomed to the work environment and job that he/she will perform. This may take just one day for people with experience or maybe 2 to 3 days for people who never did the job before. Regardless of how much experience the new employee has, I always recommend spending at least one full day shadowing the trainer. This is a good opportunity for the trainer/buddy to show the new employee the ropes.
4. During the first week – The manager and supervisor should spend time explaining performance goals and expectations for the first month of work. Explain in detail how the new employee will be evaluated and make sure that the new employee has an opportunity to ask all the questions he/she may have.
5. First month training – Both classroom style and on the-job training are necessary and beneficial for almost every job at the dairy. Detailed explanation of the why’s, how’s, what’s, when’s, and who’s of the job are a must in order to increase the chances of success of any new employee. This is the time to discuss and describe in detail cow handling policies of your dairy, as well as standard operating procedures. For example, using videos of how the milking routine must be performed at your dairy is of great benefit. As part of the evaluation, having an outside trainer that can speak the language of the new employee is always recommended. Furthermore, the trainer should perform evaluations and videotape new employees to explain areas that the trainee needs to improve or correct and the areas where he/she is performing very well.
It is imperative that once the new employee takes over the job, your supervisor or trainer continues auditing his/her work until you and your supervisor believe the work reaches your standard expectations. During this time, it is also important to continually provide feedback to the trainee. Feedback should include both casual comments about their performance and regular feedback meetings.
Remember that the first weeks on the job can set the tone for an employees experience at your dairy. Usually, new employees will be more receptive and eager to learn during these first weeks, so make sure that you and your supervisors do their best to make these first weeks a great experience for new employees.
July
Improve profitability by monitoring feeders performance
Are the feeders you work with doing a good job? How accurate are they when loading those expensive mineral blends or supplements into the mixer? How is their bunk delivery accuracy? These and others are some of the questions I ask herdsmen and managers when discussing feeding programs. Remember that feeders play a key role in the profitability of the dairy.
These are my top three things I always suggest monitoring on a daily bases in order to keep track of feeder’s performance:
Loading accuracy – Knowing how accurately your feeders are loading each ingredient into the mixer is very important for two reasons. First, loading errors can compromise cow health and will affect milk production. Second, improving loading accuracy will lead to reduced feed cost for not over feeding expensive ingredients. Remember that just an extra shake of the loader bucket can cost thousands of dollars more to the dairy. According to data from TMR Tracker, a feed management software, the ingredients that are usually more variable during loading are dry hay, soybean meal, supplements, and haylage. Use a feeding management software to monitor each feeder’s loading accuracy daily, and evaluate which are the ingredients at your dairy that tend to be more inaccurately loaded. Establish a bonus program once the feeders achieve an expected standard performance to help improve this (go to my website at www.apndairy.com for more information on incentive programs for feeders).
Feed delivery accuracy – Are the feeders at your dairy delivering the right amount of feed to each pen according to cow numbers and intakes? Many times one batch of feed is split into two pens delivering half of the feed in one pen and half in the other. If one pen consistently gets under fed by 3% for example, because that feeder tends to drop more feed in the first pen, then this can affect milk production. How bad would it be? If that pen is averaging 90 pounds of milk that means that cows in that pen should be eating about 54 pounds of dry matter a day, which would be approximately 108 pounds as fed if there is 50% dry matter in the TMR. Feeding 3% less feed could reduce milk production by about 3 pounds a day!
On the other hand, the pen that was overfed will have more refusals which will probably end up being fed to heifers or low producing cows. Therefore, the cost of feeding heifers or low producing cows will be higher than what it should.
Feed refusals – In order to monitor this it is important to weight refusals. Typically I hear all kinds of excuses for not weighing refusals, the most common one being not having enough time. However, this will help better assess how well feeders are reading feed bunks and how consistent their work is. Why is this important? It’s all about controlling feed cost. If your current feed refusals are 5% and your feed cost is of $5.50 per cow a day, then your feed losses or at best feed that will be of lower value, if fed to heifers or low producing cows, will be of almost $100,000 per year (for every 1,000 milking cows). In contrast, when running a more slick bunk management, by keeping feed refusals at 2 to 3%, feed losses or what is then fed to other group of animals would represent less than $40,000.
Furthermore, by monitoring feed refusals you and the nutritionist can better measure dry matter intake, feed efficiency, and inventory control and shrink losses. All these will be useful to more accurately calculate the bottom line profitability of the dairy (by calculating income over feed cost (IOFC)).
These should be the three main key performance indicators (KPI) used to evaluate feeders performance at the dairy. However, there are a few steps that any dairy manager or herdsmen should take before implementing these KPI. And those are:
1. Establish feeders SOP (standard operating procedures)
2. Develop a training program for feeders
3. Give good and periodic feedback
Finally, work with your nutritionist or outside consultant to establish the parameters and expectations for you monitoring system as well as for developing a training program for your feeders. If necessary, bring an outside specialist that can speak the same language as your feeders to ensure everyone is properly trained and understand the importance of their role in the dairy.
For more information on feeder’s training programs, developing SOP’s, and improving communication with your feeders don’t hesitate to contact me.
June
Incentive programs work
“I don’t believe in giving a bonus or incentive pay to my employees, I tried it once and it didn’t work”. “They are getting paid to milk cows, why should I pay more for them to try harder?”. These are comments I hear from some dairy producers when I suggest implementing incentive programs for employees.
The reality is that when designed and executed properly, and done at the right time, bonus programs DO work. Incentives will increase performance and drive productivity improving efficiency and the bottom line profitability.
Here is my Top 10 list of tips that will help you get the most out of any incentive plan:
1. DON’T implement any bonus program until performance is at your standard expectations: I like using bonus programs to achieve excellence not mediocrity. Many times I see dairy producers implementing bonuses to get people to come to work on time, or to get milkers to do a consistent milking routine. Don’t use incentives to correct problems or poor performance. Instead, use them to achieve goals and improve productivity, efficiency, and profitability.
2. Keep it simple! Bonus structures must be simple and easy to understand by your workers.
3. Use few performance parameters: Develop the bonus program based on 1 or 2 parameters. Three at the most! Example: When working with milkers focus only on SCC, parlor throughput, and milk flow in the first minute.
4. Keep track of performance daily: You should post the performance numbers daily for your employees to see. The payout can be weekly or monthly, but feedback should be available daily.
5. Give them all the tools and support they need: Don’t set up goals and expectations that will be impossible to achieve, be realistic. Do they have all the tools that they need to achieve the goals? Employees can get frustrated if the bonus is impossible to achieve because the milking units are not working properly, or the mixer is too old and doesn’t have the proper maintenance service that it should have.
6. The bonus plan should be flexible: As goals get accomplished you may have to increase your expectations. Also, some performance parameters may change depending on the time of the year.
7. Have conditions to be eligible for the bonus: Many times, workers will break rules or do almost anything to get the incentive pay. Set up some rules and conditions that will prevent this. For example: When implementing a bonus program for calf care workers based on number of calves weaned, establish a baseline or budget for use of feed and medicine. Better yet, develop feeding and treatment SOP’s to ensure that things are done properly and at the right time.
8. Workers should be properly trained: Before implementing any bonus structure employees must understand the importance of their job, the impact of their job in achieving the goals, and why, how, when, and what they are suppose to do in order to achieve excellent performance and productivity.
9. Communicate and explain the bonus structure: Before implementing the bonus plan, organize a meeting with employees and explain the bonus structure. Explain why you want to implement this bonus and ask for feedback and opinions about it. Better yet, make sure you review the plan with your key employees or supervisors before meeting with the rest of the team. Get their feedback and ideas of what type of incentive may work better for your workers.
10. Separate incentive pay from regular pay: I always suggest issuing separate checks or paying the bonus in cash and giving it out on a different day than their paycheck. Also, pay incentives on time!
Remember, when done right bonus programs can be a very effective way of rewarding excellence to individual employees or teams. Finally, share the incentive program with your veterinarian, nutritionist, and/or consultant and get them involved in the program.
May
Communication skills towards success
Strong communication skills are crucial for successful team leadership. Good communication strengthens relationships, improves performance, and motivates employees.
Here are a few tips to improve communication:
- Communicate purpose and meaning: Have a common goal and share it with all your employees. Having a common goal will inspire a diverse group of people to work hard together. Remember that the more employees know about your goals, the more buy-in you will get and the better chances that you will have to achieve those goals.
- Have meetings with your employees: Have a meeting with everyone at least once a month to update employees about goals, performance, and other good or not so good things that may be going on at the dairy. Use this monthly meeting to keep SOP’s and routines refreshed and also to keep employees motivated. Don’t make the mistake of meeting with your people only when there is a problem or things are going poorly.
- Excel at giving good and periodic feedback: This is a great way to tell your employees what you are looking for, and when done right it can be an excellent way to keep employees motivated. For example, post the key performance indicator numbers daily in a place where feeders have daily access like a break room. Or personally talk to your feeder to let him know that he is doing a great job and show him the numbers to confirm this.
- Listen actively: This shows respect and makes it more likely that the other person will share information in the future. Encourage employee’s suggestions and stay open to other viewpoints. Their input may show you things you might miss, or they may spot barriers to implementation. This will also help them embrace their jobs more.
- Develop SOP’s (Standard operating procedures). This may seem time consuming, but when done right it can bring a lot of benefits to the dairy. SOP’s will help reduce errors and variations between workers; it will improve worker’s confidence, and can be a useful tool when training new employees. Make sure you translate all protocols into Spanish if you have Spanish-speaking employees.
April
Recognizing dairy worker's performance
When was the last time you recognized someone at your dairy for going the extra mile to do something for you, or for performing an excellent job?
Employee recognition doesn’t always have to be a formal process that involves monetary compensation and is structurally established at the beginning of the year or the month. In many instances, some of the best opportunities to build morale are recognizing employees in the spot. Here is a good example: Jose just covered a milking shift for a person that called in sick at the last meeting. Not only that but, he also identified a more than average number of cows in heat during that shift. How do you reward this person for his extra effort during that day?
These are some ideas of how to recognize Jose’s or other people’s hard work and excellent performance:
• Hand him a calling card in recognition (make sure you always have a few cards handy).
• Take him for lunch or bring lunch to him. Spend some quality time with him and recognize his great work and thank him for it.
• Write a short thank you note and stick it to his paycheck.
• Have a pizza party for achieving a special goal. This is particularly effective when recognizing a team effort or excellent job.
• Taking employees to training conferences or having a formal training program with an outside trainer at the farm can be a great way to not only recognize their good work, but also to keep employees motivated.
• A satellite radio can be a good idea as an incentive to achieve an important team goal that they could use in the parlor to listen to the music or talk shows they like, in the language they want.
Independently of how you recognize employee’s excellence, don’t do the same thing every time. If done routinely it will soon become part of the expected compensation package. Instead, this week give a calling card, next week bring them lunch, the week after don’t do anything at all. Unexpected surprise recognition can be the most powerful of all!
Next month I will discuss more formal ways of recognizing excellent work through bonus programs, cross training, etc.
March
Tips to develop a wage structure for your dairy
How do you compensate your employees for the work they do for you? Do you pay your employees fairly? Do you often find yourself giving raises only to those employees that ask for it? Do you usually give raises based on seniority or merit?
These are just some of the very important questions that I ask many of my clients when discussing employee compensation programs. If you want to avoid having people constantly asking for raises, if you want to avoid having unhappy employees because they think they are not being compensated accordingly, or if you want to reduce your labor turn over rate, I suggest that you develop a wage structure for your dairy by following these steps:
Step 1 – Figure out your compensation philosophy – Do this by asking yourself the following questions:
• What can you afford to pay your employees based on your profit expectations and labor efficiency goals?
• How should your salaries compare to those of other dairies and industries in your area?
• Will you offer bonuses and incentives?
• How much will you spend on benefits, and how will this influence pay rates?
• How and when will raises be given?
• How often will you review your compensation philosophy?
• How will you communicate this philosophy to your employees?
There is no right or wrong answer to these questions. Whatever your philosophy may be, make sure that you keep it simple and you put it in writing. Also, communicate your philosophy and structure to your employees. Be consistent with your approach and evaluate your structure once a year.
Step 2 – Set up pay grades and rates of pay – Having job descriptions in place will help you develop a pay grade system for your dairy. A pay grade is a group of jobs within your dairy operation that share the same wage levels. For example, in your dairy you may consider that milkers and calf care people should be compensated the same way. Therefore, these two position will be included in the same pay grade.
At the same time, each pay grade will have a rate of pay. This rate of pay represents the lowest and highest pay within that same pay grade. For example, a milker with many years of experience, that is also in charge of training new milkers may be at the highest pay of the pay grade. A new milker, with limited experience, just recently hired will be at the lowest level of that same pay grade.
Step 3 – Define when to give pay raises and why – Some dairy operations will give pay increases on set dates of the year, or at anniversary dates, or employment milestones. The best timing for your dairy will depend on your budgets, philosophy, and compensation system.
One of the best ways to negotiate a pay increase with employees is through the “negotiated performance appraisal” developed by Gregory Billikopf, from University of California (read my article on this topic under Media). This can be a great tool to set up individual goals and expectations for each employee. Later in the year a more traditional performance appraisal can be performed at which time the employer or manager will determine if the employee deserves the raise or not according to expectations.
This way, pay raises can be given based on performance and merit rather than just because the employee has been working at the dairy for so many years. There are other ways to compensate seniority that can be more effective and fair for all employees.
Step 4 – Use bonuses and incentives as part of your compensation package – These should be considered as part of the total compensation package. Bonuses and incentives are effective ways to compensate an individual or a team for accomplishing performance goals. These shouldn’t be used to make people go from doing a poor job to doing a decent job. Bonuses and incentives should be used to promote excellence at work and accomplish challenging, but yet realistic goals. These goals should be specific and should be monitored periodically. An example of this could be if a parlor manager needs to improve milk quality (going from 200,000 to below 150,000 to obtain extra bonus). In this case, the parlor manager will set up a bonus based on SCC and prepping procedures based on milk flow in the first minute.
Step 5 – Define your full benefit package – I often times see dairy operations with excellent compensation packages that unfortunately don’t do a good job promoting it with their employees. It is important to list and describe all the benefits that come with working for your dairy. Also, make sure you communicate these to your employees and you put a dollar figure to each one of those benefits. Examples of these are: health insurance, housing, expenses covered with the housing, meat and vegetables available at the dairy, etc.
Step 6 – Communicate your salary structure plan - Once you develop your salary structure and define your incentive programs, how can you make the plan work? Here are some guidelines that will help you:
• Document your plan in writing and explain it to your labor force. Use simple language when meeting with new employees to explain how your compensation package works.
• Train your middle managers and supervisors to ensure that they understand the bonus and incentive programs.
• Pay salaries and bonuses on time. Plan these payouts to occur as soon as possible after the rewarded performance occurs.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the plan on an ongoing basis. When working with incentive programs, make sure that these are generating the intended results. Are employees motivated to achieve the goals or did they lose interest?
When done right, a good compensation program can be a powerful management tool and a compelling motivator. It can also help recruit better quality employees and reduce labor turn over rate.
For more information on salary structures and incentive programs contact Felix Soriano, APN Consulting, LLC.
February
Develop an obsession with Standard Operating Procedures (SOP's)
Consistency is a key driver of profitability in any dairy operation. From feeding, to milking routine, to calf care procedures, we always preach about the importance of day–to-day consistency in every process at the dairy. “That’s what the cows like and need!”; we tell our employees. But what do you do as a manager or supervisor to reduce variability at the dairy? Do you have an SOP for every process at the dairy? If you do, when was the last time you reviewed those SOP’s to try to improve efficiency or find ways to reduce cost in a process?
Standard operating procedures are critical to reduce variability between working shifts and within employees from a same shift. These SOP’s will be also helpful during the training process of a new employee or when refreshing protocols with old employees.
A good SOP specifies in writing what should be done, how, when, where, and by whom. Here are a few tips that will help you write your own SOP’s or evaluate the protocols that you already have in place:
- Be very concise, clear, and use simple words when writing an SOP. Wordy and long sentences will be confusing to the operator/employee.
- Use steps and sub-steps to simplify the procedure. Also, using pictures and a brief, but detailed description of each step of the procedure can be very useful (especially for employees that may have difficulty reading).
- When writing procedures of tasks that require a lot of decision making consider using a flow-chart format to simplify the process. A good example of this would be a calf diarrhea treatment protocol, or a mastitis treatment protocol.
- Before writing an SOP spend time observing employees perform the task. Describe each step, how long it takes, and what tools they need to perform the job effectively.
- Get input from the people responsible for doing the job before finalizing a process. Many times they will have good ideas on how to improve a process and make it more efficient. Giving them the opportunity to share their ideas will make them feel more engaged in the job and they will be more supportive when adopting a new protocol.
- When necessary, use an outside consultant to help you develop or review your SOP’s. Many times, a specialist can bring new ideas that can help make processes more efficient and cost effective.
- When changing an SOP, test it before implementing it with all the shifts. A good example would be modifying part of the milking routine. Try that routine with your best shift for a month and monitor parlor performance. Then, show the improved parameters to the rest of the employees and officially implement the new SOP with all shifts.
- Spend time training employees when developing a new routine/SOP. This is a critical part of the success of any new procedure. Even the smallest change in an SOP requires some training.
- Modify SOP’s depending on the time of the year. Weather conditions during different times of the year may affect the way jobs need to be done. An example of this could be stall maintenance, or manure handling.
- Post simple step-by-step SOP’s where the information is needed for quick reference, such as the milking routine in the parlor, or washing and disinfecting instructions in the calf barn.
Remember, most profitable dairies focus on ways to improve consistency in their processes by developing and periodically reviewing SOP’s. Finally, SOP’s will also ensure employee safety and good cow practices at all times.
To view examples of SOP’s go to “Services, protocols” on this website.
January 2010
Feed losses, how can you help your feed manager reduce them?
Investing in new technologies and tools to reduce feed losses is critical to the success of any dairy operation. However, if you don’t invest on training, coaching, and monitoring the people in charge of implementing your feeding program you may not see the expected returns on your investments.
Although you will never eliminate feed losses completely, it doesn’t mean that you and your feed manager can’t focus on controlling and minimizing losses to the max. In order to accomplish this you need a well planned feeding management system and very well prepared and trained feeders and feed manager to execute the feeding program.
Here are five steps that will help you accomplish this:
Step 1. Develop a simple but well planned feeding management system – With the help of your nutritionist and feed manager develop a comprehensive management plan which covers every aspect of the feeding process. Emphasis should be put on those key control points that will directly affect feed losses like:
- Feed handling and storage
- The mixing and feeding process
- Feed bunk management
Step 2. Establish a monitoring system – Once you determine the main control points where most of the feed losses occur you need to establish a monitoring system that will help keep track of those losses. Using a feeding management software will help keep track of feed losses. At the same time, it will allow the feed manager to better monitor feeder’s performance and accuracy.
Step 3. Develop standard operating procedures (SOP’s) and job descriptions – With the help of your feed manager and an outside consultant establish and communicate the role that the feeders and feed manager have in the dairy. Also, developing SOP’s is critical to reduce variation among and within feeders.
Remember that feeding consistency is one of the key factors to reduce feed losses.
Step 4. Develop key performance indicators (KPI’s) – With the help of your nutritionist and feed manager establish those parameters of the feeding process that affect feed losses the most and that are directly affected by your feeder’s performance. These KPI’s should be monitored daily or at least weekly. Examples of these KPI’s could be loading accuracy, delivery accuracy, and shrink losses of key ingredients.
Step 5. Develop a training program – With the help of your nutritionist, outside consultant, and feed manager develop a training program for feeders that will cover all the main aspects of feed and forage quality assessment, feed handling and storage, the mixing and feeding process, feed bunk management, and mixer maintenance. A good training program will reduce errors and feed losses, and will keep established feeders refreshed and motivated.
Remember that your feed manager plays a key role in the success of your feeding management program. This person should be in charge of executing the feeding program and monitoring feed losses periodically.
Help your feed manager succeed by providing continuous training to improve his/her supervisory skills if working with many feeders. If necessary, bring an outside specialist to help you with this training. Also, training on the use and applications of your feeding management software can be very helpful.
Finally, communicate with your feed manager at least weekly. Remember that constant communication is very important if you want your employees to succeed. Goals, expectations, and KPI’s should always be part of the conversation.
December
Get ready for 2010
We’ve probably gone through one of the worst dairy economic crisis in history. Fortunately, many dairy economic indicators suggest that 2010 will be a much better year for dairy producers with very promising milk prices.
Although it will take a while to recover from this crisis (some will take longer than others) , producers need to be prepared to take advantage of good milk prices ahead.
Here is a list of management practices you need to consider that will help you maximize your productivity and profitability in 2010:
1-Focus on income over feed cost (IOFC) – Cutting feed cost has been the main focus of both nutritionists and producers this year. Now it’s time to focus on maximizing herd performance and feed efficiency. Don’t make any nutritional changes without calculating IOFC first. Monitor IOFC weekly or at least monthly. Work with your nutritionist to maximize IOFC.
2-Reduce feed losses – If you haven’t done so yet, make an assessment of your bunk management and feed losses. Is there room for improvement? Evaluate the way you handle and store commodities, by products, and concentrates, and ensure that losses are minimized in the commodity bays.
3-Monitor the mixing and feeding process – Do you have feeding protocols? If you don’t, work with your nutritionist to develop SOP’s to ensure feeding and loading consistency between feeders. SOP’s will also reduce variations between and within batches of feed. Monitor loading
Inv and feeding accuracy of your feeders to reduce feeding costs. Finally, ensure that feed refusals are kept low (not more than 2%).
4-Focus on your transition cow program – Don’t cut corners or feed cost on your close ups and fresh cows. Furthermore, spend more money in these two groups to maximize performance and health. Remember that what happens at this stage will affect peak milk and the entire lactation performance of the cows.
5-Maximize parlor performance – To get the most out of your cows you need to ensure that your milkers are performing a consistent milking routine. Review your milking routine if necessary to ensure optimum milk letdown and monitor milker’s performance all the time. Meet with your milker’s on a monthly basis to show them parlor performance numbers and SCC. Finally, conducting training and refresher meetings with your employees is crucial to keep them motivated and performing to your expectations.
So remember, you can’t afford to miss the boat. Be ready to make as much milk as possible next year but, maintaining cost and efficiency always in check.
November
Top 10 things to do when managing your workers
What is your management style? Are you a hands-off, laid back type of manager or a more highly engaged type? Independently of your style, it is your job to tell people what to do and how to do it all the time. Remember that the success of your dairy will depend on the success of the employees working for you.
If you want to succeed as a manager I suggest you follow my top 10 list of things you should always do for your workers:
1-Know your people very well – Every employee is different, yet many supervisors take the same approach when it comes to managing every worker in their group. I always suggest supervisors to manage based on what works best for each employee, but in order to do that you have to know your people very well.
This is why is so important to do an assessment of each person of your team. Start by assessing each person’s strengths and weaknesses as employees.
2-Communicate with your people at least weekly – Constant communication with your workers is critical if you want to succeed as a supervisor. Talk to each one of your team members about work when things are going well, wrong, or average.
3-Tell your people what to do – If you expect an employee to do his job, you have to tell him exactly what to do. Not only that, but you also need to tell him when to do it, how to do it, and why he needs to do it that way. Using standard operating procedures will help you ensure that every employee does a consistent job which matches the specifications required by your dairy operation. Also, spend some time and money training every employee and make sure that every new worker goes through a planned orientation program.
4-Listen actively – This shows respect and by doing so you will have a better chance that your workers will be willing to share information with you in the future. Employees know when you are not paying attention and they will get angry, discouraged, and will feel unimportant thinking they are wasting your time.
5-Eliminate any frustrations or roadblocks – Pay special attention to the needs of your stars or high performers. Often times excellent workers leave a job because of frustrations that their direct bosses were not able to resolve for them.
6-Define clear goals and expectations – In order to make your workers accountable, the first step is to spell out expectations up front and in clear terms. How is their performance evaluated?
7-Monitor and document performance every step of the way – Keeping detailed notes and tracking each worker’s performance will help them achieve your expectations and goals.
8-Give feedback – Based on my experience, lack of feedback is the number one thing that front line workers complain about when I ask them about their managers.
9-Define the rules of the game – Every dairy operation should have an employee handbook with a short but clear list of rules / policies that every employee should follow. It is also important to clearly define what are the consequences of not abiding to those rules.
10-Correct failure and reward success – Do you have anyone in your team not performing to your expectations? If so, what are you doing about it? On the other hand, whether is through bonus programs, or special perks, or schedule preferences, or all of the above, make sure that high performers are properly rewarded and compensated for their hard work.
Finally, my last piece of advice is not to manage people “by special occasion”, instead solve small problems before they turn into big problems. Bottom line, keeping periodic and consistent communication with every employee, as well as monitoring, measuring, and documenting performance of each employee will help address problems as they come up.
So write a list of the people you are responsible for and get started!
October
Negotiated Performance Appraisal (NPA) – A great tool to use with your employees
As we get close to the end of the year, take time of your busy schedule to meet with your team leaders, supervisors, and/or middle managers to review this year’s performance and goals. Also, this will be a great opportunity to discuss goals and expectations for next year.
Although it won’t replace daily communication, the negotiated performance appraisal (NPA) can help you jointly develop a plan for performance expectations and improvement, and how to achieve those goals individually with each one of them.
Here are a few tips on how to make the NPA work:
• Define your goals before implementing a negotiated performance appraisal.
• Always communicate the objectives of the NPA with employees before the meeting. Make sure they understand it is for their own benefit and the benefit of the dairy.
• Meet first with your middle managers before they implement this NPA program with the entire workforce. This will give them the opportunity to learn the details about how to run the NPA meetings before doing it with their own people.
• If possible, have a third party involved in the NPA to help guide the employees before and during the NPA. Preferably this person should have experience in labor management and be bilingual in English and Spanish when necessary.
• Have a follow up meeting after a few weeks of the meeting to review what was discussed and finalize the plans and implementation of the program.
• Meet again after 6 months or one year (depending on what was stipulated during the NPA) to have a more traditional performance appraisal to discuss progress on goals.
• Use the traditional system to negotiate salary raises and bonus programs based on the agreements made during the NPA evaluation.
The negotiated performance appraisal can be a great tool to use once or twice per year as a coaching tool with your employees. You will be able to improve people’s skills, define goals and expectations for them, and develop a succession plan for your operation with your key employees.
For more information on how to run a negotiated performance appraisal and what questions to ask please call me at 215-738-9130 or email me at felix@apndairy.com
September
Who’s in charge of feeding your cows?
The feeder plays a very important role at the farm. This is why in many dairy operations owners are still reluctant to have someone else other than themselves feed the cows.
Why not make one of your Spanish speaking employees a feeder? From my experience, communication barriers and lack of formal training are two main reasons why Spanish-speaking employees are less likely to be responsible for feeding and bunk management.
When evaluating the potential of an employee to take the feeding management role, these are some of the abilities and talents they need to look for:
1-Positive attitude and proactive – Find someone that is always trying hard to do his / her best, someone that is constantly thinking of new ideas and processes to make the job more effective and efficient.
2-Responsible and on time every day – This is very important since the feeder plays a critical role in the performance of the animals. Feeding cows at the same time every day and having a very consistent TMR are critical.
3-Open-minded and eager to learn more – This position will require constant training and skill development.
4-Organized and detail oriented – This person will have to monitor and manage feed inventory, keep feed intake records, and be consistent with the feeding process.
5-Self confident – Have decisiveness and make decisions on his/her own. For example, after testing forage moisture levels change the amount of forages fed accordingly or make the adjustments on the feeding software program used. At the same time, this person has to be willing to ask questions when in doubt.
6-Literate in Spanish and / or English (preferably both) – This position will require the ability of writing, reading, and in some cases doing basic math calculations.
7-Analytical, but yet practical – This person will have to evaluate herd performance, feed intake, feeders reports, etc. and based on that information make the necessary changes to maintain or improve performance.
8-Likes to be challenged – There are always new concepts, ideas, and technologies that can be put into practice in the feeding area of the dairy industry.
9-Honest – Not afraid to admit when they make a mistake.
10-Have knowledge or is willing to develop basic computer skills – In order for this person to become a proficient feeder, he or she will have to learn some basic computer skills to be able to work with excel spread sheets, computerized feeding software, and dairy data analysis software.
It is not realistic to think that an employee with all these attributes will be easily found. In fact, even though many of these qualities will be necessary, especially the ones associated with attitude and behavior some can be taught or developed. So once you have identified the right candidate from within your organization to cover a future opening for the Feeding Management position, make a list of the skills and abilities that this person will have to develop and / or improve in order to succeed in this position. Having a job description will help establish these needs.
Also, if you have this job description in Spanish it will help to communicate the job requirements to your employee.
July - August
Work with your feeders to reduce feeding cost
How often do you monitor feeding accuracy of your feeders? When was the last time you talked to your feeders about their role in the dairy’s profitability?
Communicating with your feeders is crucial if you want to reduce feed cost and improve feed efficiency. Furthermore, feedback is what most employees mention when asked about things that their managers should improve. Here are six practices that feeding managers should consider to improve feeder’s performance and reduce feed cost:
1. Have a meeting with your feeders and talk to them about the importance of their role on the dairy. Refresh protocols and explain the whys of each step of the loading, mixing, and feeding process. Be specific about the economic impact that their performance and accuracy have on feed cost and income over feed cost. Take this opportunity to talk to them about the current dairy economic crisis and give an example of income over feed cost.
2. Define your KPI’s (Key performance indicators). You should be able to monitor these KPI’s daily, and these should be directly affected by the feeder’s performance. Also, these KPI’s should have an impact on cow performance, feed cost, and overall profitability of the dairy. Using a feed management software like Feed Watch or TMR Tracker will help monitor feeder’s performance more easily and accurately. Some examples of KPI’s that will affect the dairies bottom line are:
a. Loading accuracy (Individual ingredients and overall feed)
b. Feeding accuracy (Variation between expected amount of feed per pen and actual amount fed)
c. Mixing time (This can have an impact on herd health and performance)
d. Shrink losses of key ingredients (Keeping good ingredient and forage inventories is crucial)
3. Give good and periodic feedback to your feeders. This is a great way to tell your feeders what you are looking for, and when done right it can be an excellent way to keep employees motivated. For example, post the KPI numbers daily in a place where feeders have daily access like a break room. Leave a note saying “great job” or “Keep up the good work” when numbers are improving or are excellent. Before posting these numbers, make sure that everyone understands the meaning of these KPI’s.
4. Recognize great performance and penalize poor performers. Develop a bonus program that will reward excellent performance but at the same time will penalize poor performance. Feeders need to know in advance (upfront contract) what the consequences are for not performing according to your expectations. A good example can be rewarding loading accuracy (Feeders can make more money as the loading error is reduced). This reward may vary depending on the type and cost of the ingredient.
5. Develop SOP’s (Standard operating procedures). This may seem time consuming, but when done right it can bring a lot of benefits to the dairy. SOP’s will help reduce errors and variations between feeders; it will improve feeder’s confidence, and can be a useful tool when training new employees. Have your key feeder participate of the development of these SOP’s. This will give him a sense of ownership of the SOP’s and will help you get the entire team buy into the implementation of the new protocols. Make sure you translate all protocols into Spanish if you have Spanish-speaking employees.
6. Develop a training / orientation program for new feeders. This will reduce errors, feed cost, and will also improve the chances of success of your new feeder. First, establish who the trainer will be and then train that person as a trainer (train the trainer). If necessary, bring an outside specialist that can help you develop this training/orientation program. Preferably, this consultant should speak the same language as your employees. Important topics to consider for a training program are:
a. Dry matter calculations
b. Importance of loading accuracy
c. The mixing process
d. The feeding process
e. Feed bunk management
f. Mixer maintenance
g. Proper silo face bunk management
h. Feed inventory
i. Feed shrink
By taking these steps you will improve your feeders desire to perform at their maximum level. Reinforcing the importance of their role, constantly giving feedback, and rewarding excellent performance can go a long way with your employees and will reduce feed costs and improve IOFC.
May - June
Improve your parlor profitability - Focus on parlor performance and efficiency
Excel at monitoring parlor performance, productivity, efficiency, and operating cost.
You may have heard the term “you can’t manage something that you can’t measure”. This is also true for a parlor manager or farm owner who expects to make good parlor management decisions. By closely and periodically monitoring parlor performance and efficiency you can:
1. Better evaluate the potential impact of any management change (like going from 3X to 2X milking in a low group).
2. Better evaluate your current parlor operating process, efficiency, and profitability.
3. Motivate change among employees by showing parlor and milking shifts data.
The performance indicators should be related to productivity, efficiency, and profitability.
What should be monitored?
• Cows per hour / Turns per hour – Either one of these can be a major component of parlor efficiency and labor productivity and it is determined by the number of cows that are milked per hour (cows per hour) or the times each side is filled in one hour (turns per hour).
• Milk flow in the first 15 seconds and first 30-60 seconds - These are very useful as monitors of milk letdown and udder preparation.
• Somatic cell counts - Monitor bulk SCC daily and post this information for your employees to see. Your benchmark and goals for this should be communicated with your employees and established as a common goal for the milking team. Everyone should be focused on improving milk quality, and every employee should have a basic understanding of the meaning and importance of having low bulk SCC’s. Having training programs and refreshers with your milking team can be very helpful. Work with an external consultant that can communicate in the native language of your employees if necessary.
• Pounds of milk sold per employee (Full time worker employee as described by Penn State) - This is a major component of parlor efficiency and should be evaluated at least on a monthly basis.
• Revenue per employee (Full time worker employee as described by Penn State) – This is calculated by the total income of milk sold divided by the number of full time worker employees. Like the other parlor parameters to monitor, a benchmark and more challenging goal should be established. Also, discussing this with the parlor manager will help the farm owner find areas that can be improved and areas where costs can be reduced.
• Income over parlor operating cost - This is calculated by the total income of milk sold divided by the parlor operating cost. This is a major component of parlor profitability. However, detailed information of parlor operating cost is important to be able to make an accurate assessment of this parameter.
Summary
During any crisis there are also opportunities. If you haven’t done it yet, use this dairy economic crisis as an opportunity to review your parlor performance and efficiency and begin monitoring parameters that will help your dairy become more profitable. In some cases you may realize that you can operate your parlor with less people but in some cases that may not be true.
March - April
Talk to your workforce about current dairy economy
For the last couple of months I’ve been spending most of my time meeting with dairy farm workers and talking about the current dairy economy and discussing ways to improve efficiencies, profitability, and performance. My main goal at these meetings has
been to create awareness among employees about the current economic crisis and the impact that their role has in reducing operating costs and improving efficiency and productivity.
Surprisingly enough, many farm workers (especially Spanish speaking employees) are not aware of what their employer is going through. In some cases they are relatively well informed about the global economic crisis, but they rarely associate this with what is going on at the dairy farm level.
Here are a few suggestions of things you should be doing in order to create worker’s awareness:
• Set up a meeting with all your workers and discuss current milk prices. Be specific and
give examples of how current milk prices are affecting the farm’s profitability. You don’t need to show them your exact profit numbers if you are not comfortable, but you can use national milk prices and milk to feed cost ratio parameters as examples. It is important that your employees realize how bad the situation is and focus on reducing costs and being more efficient.
• Discuss with them how, they as employees, can help reduce costs (eg: don’t waste the disinfectant used for pre and post dipping cows, better managing foot bath products, or being more conscious when using medicines, etc). Also, if you are providing housing for your employees, make sure that you discuss electric and heat bills with them and budget their expenses.
• One week later, meet individually with each team (milker’s supervisors, transition cow managers, calf care people, feeders, etc) to discuss more specific ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency in each dairy area. Many times, your employees will have good ideas of how to reduce costs, be more productive, and improve a system’s efficiency. They can also come up with good ideas of where and how to save more or waste less.
Finally, this can be a good time, if you haven’t done it yet, to develop (along with your managers) a budget for each department within your dairy. Reviewing the budget on a monthly basis with each one of your leaders along with the goals for each sector of your dairy can be another way of controlling and better monitoring your operating costs.
