On October 17, 2018 there was a major change to Canadian law which is very slowly starting to ripple its way through workplaces across Canada. Farms are included in this workplace change but the question is are farmers ready for the change that is about to sweep over them? RealAg Radio host Shaun Haney dives… Read More
Category: Human Resources
For eight years Kay Kuenker was the only woman on the executive team at Dow AgroSciences. That experience has taught her much about how women and men can work together in the agribusiness executive suite. Today, Kuenker works as consultant with her own company, K2Kinetics. At the recent Advancing Women in Agriculture Conference in Niagara Falls,… Read More
In agriculture, women are under represented in leadership roles. How do we change that? For Cargill, one of the world’s largest agribusinesses, change comes in the form of a commitment to achieve gender parity in management by 2030. The goal is to have women occupy 50 per cent of leadership roles in the organization at that… Read More
When it comes to communicating in the workplace — men and women don’t typically speak the same language. According to Sherry Waddingham, president of Mindshift, a Toronto-based workplace communications company, men tend to be more assertive, competitive, look to problem solve and are poor listeners. Women on the other hand, are less assertive, look to share… Read More
Capital assets don’t buy groceries. If this statement makes you scratch your head a little, you’re likely the older generation on the farm. If you read it and think, “Don’t I know it” you might be the in-coming generation, and very likely frustrated by the lack of clarity on how the farm’s equity and income… Read More
We recently posted a new episode of our Mind Your Farm Business podcast that focuses on human resource management. In conversation with four farmers across Canada we dug deep into topics like recruiting talent and methods to retaining the top performers. Not only were the farmers from a diverse geographic region, but their strategies for managing… Read More
Which questions do you ask potential new hires? Where to you find your next star farm employee? Is the employee handbook up to date? If you laughed and thought, we don’t even HAVE an employee handbook, this podcast episode is for you. In this Mind Your Farm Business episode, host Shaun Haney takes us on… Read More
Forget the standard five and 10-year outlooks of strategic planning. Instead, have you figured out where to best put your time in in a day? Whether or not you and your spouse are collaborating to your full potential? Is technology helping or hindering your farm operation? These are the kinds of questions Nick Bontis, professor of… Read More
This week the Ontario government passed Bill 148, the Fair Workplaces Better Jobs Act. Among other changes to workplace laws, it will mean an increase in the province’s minimum wage, from $11.60 to $14 on January 1, and $15 on the same day in 2019. With other provinces potentially following suit, the potential impacts are… Read More
When people go trail riding or use their ATV for recreational use, wearing a helmet is something that most don’t blink an eye to. They do it with no questions asked. So why is it when we use them around the farm, we hop on the quad at the same speeds, helmet-less, without thinking twice?… Read More
The Alberta government has announced it will be covering course fees for students enrolling in the province’s Green Certificate apprenticeship-style agricultural training program. Education Minister David Eggen and Agriculture Minister Oneil Carlier were at the Whitemud Equine Learning Centre in Edmonton on Wednesday where they committed up to $400,000 annually to cover course fees. Around… Read More
If you’ve never heard Jolene Brown, farm family advisor and total firecracker, speak, you’re missing out. Brown spoke recently at the Advancing Women in Agriculture conference in Calgary, and then found some time to sit down with our own Shaun Haney to talk about in-laws, tough decisions, work/life/farm balance, and what family really means. Brown… Read More
So these two Newfoundlanders end up at a farming conference… It may sound like the beginning of great joke, but it’s actually none other than RealAgriculture’s Bern Tobin meeting up with General Rick Hillier, former chief of defence staff for the Canadian Armed Forces, to talk about leadership and the importance of people. Speaking at… Read More
“Budgets are always going to be tight, regulatory issues are always going to be confounding, but creativity is free.” Whether we’re talking about employees at Disney or on a North American farm, financial and regulatory constraints will always exist. How businesses perform within those limitations depends on creativity, stresses Doug Lipp, business consultant and author… Read More
Just as every farmer needs to move away from being “just a farmer” and recognize they are business owners and leaders, each individual within the farm business needs to own their true title — from operations manager, to human resource lead, and on to CEO. This probably holds the most true for the “farm wife.”… Read More