I failed to retain staff today

Drillman · Oct 25, 2017

JWL said:
Yes, but it's up to you whether you think that their ideas are better for you at the end of the day. Some people think that they know everything when they don't

2 lads help me 1 a local farmers son who usually has a good grasp of what's needed to be done. i value his input he values mine.

The other chap is Polish. he's happy as long as he's armpit deep in work. A very practical lad, and if he has a suggestion it's usually worth listening to.

JWL · Oct 25, 2017

Drillman said:
2 lads help me 1 a local farmers son who usually has a good grasp of what's needed to be done. i value his input he values mine.

The other chap is Polish. he's happy as long as he's armpit deep in work. A very practical lad, and if he has a suggestion it's usually worth listening to.

As with anything in life, a fresh set of eyes can often spot the obvious, there's times I listen to my 16 year old son but then again there's far more times I look at him with dispair!

bumkin · Oct 25, 2017

i think we are going off piste a bit in places this all started with some one refusing to drive a three year old tractor some comments are humour but others enlightening as to the personality of the person writing ,i agree it is best to discus work with ones employees,i tend to work along side my employees but i have found over the years it has become more difficult to find good men.i once sent my son and a man to staple up sheep netting you might describe the weather as soft, mid afternoon i took some tea and biscuits up the field to find the man sitting under the trailer on his mobile phone while my son was stapling i looked under the trailer the chap said hang on im talking to my girlfriend when he came out i poured the tea and said i think you should be stapling not talking to your girl friend, he replied im a fecking tractor driver not a fecking labourer and had a rant, so i said when you come down will you come to the office when he did i gave him his money due and just said now your an unemployed driver when i was young i worked in demolition and scrap plant hire and if i had spoken like that to my elders i would have been flat on my back

bumkin · Oct 25, 2017

Neuson510k said:
Im putting my hands up.. I struggled to retain a member of staff today.

Couldn’t believe it, an employee refused to drive a 3 year old tractor today and threw the toys out of the pram because he couldn’t drive the new one,

I got the “if I don’t get the new one, I’m going home”

The look on his face when I told him to go home was priceless. Actually was gutted for him because he hung around for an hour in the tea room expecting me to change my mind.

i have had similar one chap went home mid afternoon when we were combining the reason it was to hot and he didnt have air con on his tractor this was about twenty years ago very few tractors had aircon he had a three speed fan and a roof hatch and we are on the coast its seldom too hot

RushesToo · Oct 25, 2017

Sometimes it is easier looking at how to take management decisions with a yes no path to follow. I have always found this one helpful:

JWL · Oct 25, 2017

I did have a student run off home one day on a farm I was a manager on, it might have been something to do with the look in my eyes when he had slammed the grain shute door on the trailer we were bagging cake out of when my hand was in there!
He was running as soon as he did it, I had to go round to his house to reassure him that I wasn't going to slam his head in the thing and it was safe to come back to the farm. He did take some persuading but I had calmed down by then

We still keep in contact now some 20 years later.

An Gof · Oct 25, 2017

RushesToo said:
Sometimes it is easier looking at how to take management decisions with a yes no path to follow. I have always found this one helpful:

View attachment 594098

Interesting, but there are occasions when a dose of JFDI is appropriate

milkloss · Oct 25, 2017

bumkin said:
i think we are going off piste a bit in places this all started with some one refusing to drive a three year old tractor some comments are humour but others enlightening as to the personality of the person writing ,i agree it is best to discus work with ones employees,i tend to work along side my employees but i have found over the years it has become more difficult to find good men.i once sent my son and a man to staple up sheep netting you might describe the weather as soft, mid afternoon i took some tea and biscuits up the field to find the man sitting under the trailer on his mobile phone while my son was stapling i looked under the trailer the chap said hang on im talking to my girlfriend when he came out i poured the tea and said i think you should be stapling not talking to your girl friend, he replied im a fecking tractor driver not a fecking labourer and had a rant, so i said when you come down will you come to the office when he did i gave him his money due and just said now your an unemployed driver when i was young i worked in demolition and scrap plant hire and if i had spoken like that to my elders i would have been flat on my back

How did you get on at the tribunal?

RushesToo · Oct 26, 2017

An Gof said:
Interesting, but there are occasions when a dose of JFDI is appropriate

The graph definitely allows for JFDI - but it suggests ways where you may get to the same decision and maybe have people still following you as you go over the top. It is also titled leadership skills not management and does assume that there is a plan in place that runs a few years and continuity in people that are concerned. From what @Neuson510k had said this was more about leadership in that he will have to live with a fairly large team that need to jointly respect his decision making in order to continue to run the ship; the alternatives might not be pretty.
I have to agree sometimes JFDI, but putting a print out on the office wall might help, particularly if others glimpse it and maybe think about how you got to your decision.

JWL · Oct 26, 2017

RushesToo said:
I have to agree sometimes JFDI, but putting a print out on the office wall might help, particularly if others glimpse it and maybe think about how you got to your decision.

Just don't leave the set of darts in plain view

waterbuffalofarmer · Oct 26, 2017

Nithsdale Farmer said:
Try being a janitor in, say, McDonalds...

"Your here to clean the floor, not make managerial comments" is what you'd be told.

Tweak that to say:
"Your here to drive a tractor, not run the farm".

All of a sudden it Isn't so out of line with other work places.

Know your station.

Exactly the reason why I won't be working for you then

#RESPECT

Red Fred · Oct 26, 2017

Where I was working as a student, we had a situation where the head tractor driver, who was the local union rep, decided he wasn't going to drive the forager as the Silade hurt his eyes.
The boss stood up to him so it ended up with all the drivers effectively on strike refusing to do the silageing. (It was the year of the miners' strike which stirred things up)
The boss decided that as I was only the student, I would have to drive the forager and he would get his family to help on the rest of the work, which put me in a very ticklish position where I was damned if I worked and damned if I didn't. In the end, I decided I owed my job to the boss and only had a few weeks left anyway, and got on with it. The other drivers actually didn't give me any bother as they saw it simply as more oppression from the boss.
When I went back to visit a few years later, I discovered that all the regulars had been gradually got rid of and all the harvest work, etc, was being done by students.

ollie989898 · Oct 26, 2017

bumkin said:
i think we are going off piste a bit in places this all started with some one refusing to drive a three year old tractor some comments are humour but others enlightening as to the personality of the person writing ,i agree it is best to discus work with ones employees,i tend to work along side my employees but i have found over the years it has become more difficult to find good men.i once sent my son and a man to staple up sheep netting you might describe the weather as soft, mid afternoon i took some tea and biscuits up the field to find the man sitting under the trailer on his mobile phone while my son was stapling i looked under the trailer the chap said hang on im talking to my girlfriend when he came out i poured the tea and said i think you should be stapling not talking to your girl friend, he replied im a fecking tractor driver not a fecking labourer and had a rant, so i said when you come down will you come to the office when he did i gave him his money due and just said now your an unemployed driver when i was young i worked in demolition and scrap plant hire and if i had spoken like that to my elders i would have been flat on my back

That is a disgrace, I don't think anyone here would argue to the contrary. I might be a complete muppet but loyalty has always been my middle name in work.

glasshouse · Oct 26, 2017

Red Fred said:
Where I was working as a student, we had a situation where the head tractor driver, who was the local union rep, decided he wasn't going to drive the forager as the Silade hurt his eyes.
The boss stood up to him so it ended up with all the drivers effectively on strike refusing to do the silageing. (It was the year of the miners' strike which stirred things up)
The boss decided that as I was only the student, I would have to drive the forager and he would get his family to help on the rest of the work, which put me in a very ticklish position where I was damned if I worked and damned if I didn't. In the end, I decided I owed my job to the boss and only had a few weeks left anyway, and got on with it. The other drivers actually didn't give me any bother as they saw it simply as more oppression from the boss.
When I went back to visit a few years later, I discovered that all the regulars had been gradually got rid of and all the harvest work, etc, was being done by students.

You wernt too red back then?

Red Fred · Oct 26, 2017

glasshouse said:
You wernt too red back then?

Only red with silver wheel rims!

Red Fred · Oct 26, 2017

We had a guy at home who I'm certain used to sabotage things if he had to do anything extra. Dad was very soft on him and gave him the benefit of the doubt, but you could guarantee that if he was asked to do anything extra like doing the feeding while I had a weekend off, there would be a very expensive mishap to deal with on Monday morning.
It was usually along the lines of "I thought the fan belt was loose and accidently put a spanner through the radiator."
A mate on a big estate tells me that their stockmen deliberately abused their yard tractors as they thought they weren't the make they wanted and again, it was very hard to prove anything

Kiwi Pete · Oct 26, 2017

Have had that crap to deal with, too.
Small wonder I only employ myself now...

One dairy assistant would ride her bike through tomorrow's break fences if she wasn't the first allowed to be headed home - I just ended up in survival mode and did most things myself by the end of it.
All sorts of sabotage - opening closed gates, putting handfuls of dirt in the milk tank, breaking the household stuff we'd given her and throwing the bits on our lawn

Thoroughly annoyed with myself for being such a poor people manager, but I had no support from the business owner either, the message was "just stick it out til the end of the season"

The list of tasks that I had to complete myself, grew and grew, and the other staff moaning about 'how hard they had it' got worse and worse.

Hard being piggy in the middle sometimes, need to clamp down fast on this type of thing before it gets a chance to fester.

Douglasmn · Oct 26, 2017

From an owner's point of view, I prefer my old tractor. It's very cheap to run and does the same job as a new machine. From a driver's point of view, it's fine as well. Routine cleaning and a 10 year old machine can be nicer to sit in than a 1 year old machine that hasn't been properly looked after.

multi power · Oct 26, 2017

Kiwi Pete said:
Have had that crap to deal with, too.
Small wonder I only employ myself now...

One dairy assistant would ride her bike through tomorrow's break fences if she wasn't the first allowed to be headed home - I just ended up in survival mode and did most things myself by the end of it.
All sorts of sabotage - opening closed gates, putting handfuls of dirt in the milk tank, breaking the household stuff we'd given her and throwing the bits on our lawn
Thoroughly annoyed with myself for being such a poor people manager, but I had no support from the business owner either, the message was "just stick it out til the end of the season"
The list of tasks that I had to complete myself, grew and grew, and the other staff moaning about 'how hard they had it' got worse and worse.
Hard being piggy in the middle sometimes, need to clamp down fast on this type of thing before it gets a chance to fester.

Yes I've got that t shirt too

Will 1594 · Oct 26, 2017

JWL said:
I did have a student run off home one day on a farm I was a manager on, it might have been something to do with the look in my eyes when he had slammed the grain shute door on the trailer we were bagging cake out of when my hand was in there!
He was running as soon as he did it, I had to go round to his house to reassure him that I wasn't going to slam his head in the thing and it was safe to come back to the farm. He did take some persuading but I had calmed down by then
We still keep in contact now some 20 years later.

That made me laugh I would of done too . And then said it could of been worse ! Could of been my hand . @Neuson510k What was the lads role in the team ?

I failed to retain staff today

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100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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