Opinion: Changing Labor Landscape - Reassessing Our Attention, Focus

During harvest, a customer noted he was working his 70th straight day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. If you stop and think about it, that 10-week run of harvest equates to 40% of your annual hours if you worked 40 hours per week and did not take a vacation.

Your first reaction might be, “Yep that sounds like harvest.”

If you step back and look at the broader agricultural picture, companies such as Nabisco, Kellogg, Heaven Hill, and Deere are facing labor strikes as they try to renegotiate contracts. One issue that’s been brought up a few times is overtime and working weekends.

The American Airlines pilots’ union specifically pointed this out, after rejecting 150-200% pay for picking up holiday trips, by saying the airline was "lazily" throwing money at its "mismanagement."

In other words, it does not matter so much what you pay me, I’d rather have time with my family over the holidays than make an extra buck. It would appear people enjoyed spending more time at home last year and want to make that a priority going forward.

Rather than be reactionary, how do we as an industry address these needs and desires going forward?

Perhaps hiring additional staff to lessen demands on current workers, multiple shifts during harvest, or maybe it’s as simple as not putting out that extra ground pile to keep up morale. Arguably it all starts with leadership and the culture that’s created by them.

The manager who had worked 70 days in a row commented “it’s hard work, but we’ve created a culture of caring for the customer, and working the hours during harvest is one way we show that.”

In a recent Harvard Business Review podcast, Ron Heifetz noted “attention is the currency of leadership,” and who or what we direct our energy towards matters for all those involved in our company.

In a changing work environment, how are we giving attention to the things that matter most: employees, customers, family, etc.?

Prepared by Taylor Sauder, risk management consultant, Advance Trading Inc., Bloomington, IL; 309-664-2326; taylorsauder@advance-trading.com.