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More farmers are learning about workforce management and the cost of open jobs

A University of Wisconsin Extension educator says many farmers have to learn how to manage people along with the crops and livestock. Jim Verswayveld says, “It may not be people’s favorite. It may not be what they signed up for, and so as farms get larger, and the related workforces on those farms gets larger, it becomes more and more of a challenging thing.”

Verswayveld tells Brownfield research from UW agricultural engineering professor John Shutske shows the cost of not filling an open position can equal one-third of a year’s wages. “Yes, sometimes people don’t consider, you know, the downtime of having a vacancy on your team, particularly a key vacancy. That can be really destructive, and then you have all of the expenses related to recruiting and onboarding, so yeah, the costs definitely add up.”

Verswayveld covered these farm management issues during a recent Farm Management Fridays webinar.  The UW Extension series is free online every other Friday through April and can be found by searching for Farm Ready Research on the Internet.