Rally Your Team: 7 Tips to Maximize Hours and Reduce Stress During Planting

To ensure a smooth planting season your team needs to be firing on all cylinders. They also need to be rested and excited for the task at hand.

“You have spent all winter preparing the machinery and selecting crop inputs so everything will run smoothly during planting,” says Bob Milligan, senior consultant at Dairy Strategies. “Have you made similar plans for your people?”

Stress can be high during planting season as you and your employees put in long hours. These hours are necessary, but you can’t jeopardize safety, the long-term motivation of employees and even to the culture of the business, Milligan says.

Milligan provides these recommendations to assure you will have productive, upbeat and passionate employees during the busy cropping season:

1. Anyone, including the boss, who has not had a recent significant break away from the farm should have one before it gets really busy.
2. Check your personal calendar and ask your employees to identify special family events – birthdays, weddings, anniversaries, etc. – that will occur during the planting season. Make plans to ensure that you and your employees will not be expected to work on those important dates.
3. Identify a time, preferable at least one day a week, you and your employees know they will never be working. Each person and their family need some time when they can schedule family activity and personal commitments.
4. Identify a maximum work period that will NEVER be exceeded. This may be per day and/or per week.
5. Make certain you have sufficient labor to deliver on the cover employees who request or need time off. This may require additional part-time labor, perhaps from one or more people who are moonlighting. Be certain they are not stretching themselves too far as well.
6. Cross train employees to make covering tasks easy and doable. You want at least two people who can do almost every task.
7. As the season progresses, observe everyone including yourself for symptoms of stress, emotional or physical and burnout.

“You have your equipment and your inputs ready for spring,” Milligan says. “Now make certain your workforce plan is in place as well.”

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