Getting Employees to "Care" more

During a recent visit with a client in Iowa, the owners talked about a challenge that they had in getting their employees to “care more about the pigs.” They had discussed ventilation issues, appropriate watering and feeding, watching for sows that didn’t eat, etc.—all the important stockmanship training issues—but it seemed that it was not getting through to their people.

Instead of reviewing their training process and regular monitoring, I asked them about what areas the employees did seem to care about. “Well,” the wife said, “they really like to see the pigs ‘happy.’ They can tell when they walk into a building if the pigs are ‘happy’ and they seem to like seeing the pigs behave that way.”

We talked then about making the connection between paying attention to the details that resulted in the pigs being “happy.” She needed to show them how feeders that are adjusted right give the pigs the right amount of feed, and help them see how when the ventilation is set correctly the pigs are more comfortable. Show them the pigs, not just the heater that isn’t working. Help them to see the differences in how pigs lay when they are comfortable vs. uncomfortable. Show them how pigs react when you enter a room if they are comfortable and “happy.” This is a way to use something that really matters to them, to get them to do something that really matters to the pigs. We did not change the information or the training, we simply changed the focus of the training to the things that mattered to the employees, and that they could notice on their own.

There was a bit of a language barrier in this operation, so taking this approach—using observations that are easy to distinguish tied to something that these employees did care about—helped them make the connection between paying attention to details and raising the level of “caring.”

Don Tyler; Tyler & Associates