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An Introvert’s Guide to Giving Employee Feedback

By Kaitlyn Lutz

A few weeks ago, I was sitting around a table in a farm office reviewing some employee feedback with the farm management team. Employees, almost unanimously, were asking for more job-related feedback from the supervisors and owners. This was important to work on since giving quality and timely feedback usually improves employee performance and job satisfaction.

While throwing out suggestions on how to achieve this, the farm owner asked this astute and humbling question- how do you give feedback successfully as an introvert? This was a barrier I hadn’t spent much time thinking about, despite my own introverted nature.

Here are some tips for our fellow introverted farmers searching to improve performance and strengthen connection with their farm team:

  • Mentality shift:

Feedback isn’t criticism or an “atta boy”, it’s a tool to help develop people and your business.

  • Keep it simple: Situation, Observation, Impact.

Example: “This morning while you were cleaning pens (situation), I noticed you were using headphones while driving the skid steer (observation). Wearing headphones prevents you from hearing what is going on around you and can cause accidents (impact). Please don’t wear headphones while operating machinery, we want to keep everyone safe.”

  • Keep it short, clear and timely.
  • More frequent, one-on-one rather than group meetings.
  • Aim for twice as much positive feedback as re-directive feedback.

The only way to feel more comfortable is to practice delivering feedback. Here’s a checklist to refer to as you start practicing:

  • Was my feedback specific (i.e., not just “good job”)?
  • Was I objective and job-focused, not emotional and person-focused?
  • Did I explain why it matters?
  • Did I suggest how to improve next time?

Remember, being genuine goes a long way and even though it may feel awkward at first, just like with anything new, practice is the only way to build the skill. The discomfort will fade as you see what a big difference quality feedback makes to your employee connection and your overall farm culture.

By Kaitlyn Lutz, Cornell University. Permission granted to repost, quote, and reprint with author attribution.
The post An Introvert’s Guide to Giving Employee Feedback appeared in The Ag Workforce Journal.

Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development logo

Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development Expands Team to Support Farm Employers and Employees

Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development is committed to helping farms create exceptional workplaces staffed by engaged, productive employees. This mission is strongly supported by New York’s agricultural industry and state government partners. As a result of this support, we’re excited to welcome two talented individuals to our team this summer, significantly expanding our capacity to serve farm employers and employees across the state.

Regulatory Extension Associate: Lucas Smith, J.D.
Picture of Lucas SmithLucas Smith joins us as an Extension Associate with a focus on regulatory compliance with state and federal labor laws. A native of Clifton Springs in the Finger Lakes region, Lucas earned a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Sciences from Cornell University, concentrating in business management and policy. He recently completed his law degree at Albany Law School.

Lucas brings a wealth of relevant experience, including work on farms, a student role with Cornell Ag Workforce Development, and positions at a private law firm and the New York State Public Employment Relations Board (PERB). In his new role, Lucas will expand our extension education and research efforts to help farm owners and employees better understand and comply with complex regulatory requirements. Our goal is to support farms in maintaining compliance while operating efficiently in today’s dynamic regulatory landscape

Organization Development Extension Associate: Kaitlyn Lutz, VMD DABVP
Picture of Kaitlyn LutzDr. Kaitlyn Lutz joins the team as an Extension Associate specializing in organizational development. Most recently, Kaitlyn worked with Cornell Cooperative Extension’s Northwest NY Dairy, Livestock, and Field Crops Team as a bilingual dairy educator. She also brings prior experience as a practicing veterinarian in Western New York.

In her new role, Kaitlyn will apply her communication and leadership skills to help farms address human resource challenges and optimize organizational structures. She will lead efforts to assess and enhance workplace culture, design strategic change interventions, and align leadership with production goals to drive performance. Kaitlyn will also conduct applied research to develop and refine tools for organizational development in farm settings. Her work will support farms across New York’s diverse agriculture sectors, including dairy, fruit, vegetable, grape, and greenhouse/nursery operations.

Learn more about the Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development team at our website.

By Richard Stup, Cornell University. Permission granted to repost, quote, and reprint with author attribution.
The post Cornell Ag Workforce Development Expands Team to Support Farm Employers and Employees appeared in The Ag Workforce Journal.

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Automation won’t replace farm labor anytime soon

Labor costs continue to mount. Regulatory drivers such as minimum wage and overtime increase hourly rates. Meanwhile, labor scarcity driven by immigration enforcement, and demographic factors such as shrinking rural populations further decrease the supply of potential farm employees. When the cost and availability of workers increases, conversations turn increasingly to automation and ways that technology might replace human labor in agriculture. High costs and difficulty finding labor makes the price of labor-saving technology relatively more attractive.

Two recent articles from Choices, the magazine of the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association shed some light on technology adoption in agriculture. Automatic Milking Systems: Labor-Savings Route or Costly Gamble for Dairy Farmers shares results of survey of Wisconsin farms who have and have not adopted automatic milking systems. Overall, the findings are inconclusive, highlighting the weakness of survey research in understanding decisions as complex as whether or not to adopt expensive, labor-saving technologies. In the specialty crop sector, Balancing Challenges of Scale and Scope Economies in the Development of Labor-Saving Technology for Specialty Crop Production, does a good job exploring the differences between scale and scope in farm automation. A machine that scales well can handle a lot of volume but may only do one thing, like a combine. While a machine with wide scope may do many things, like a general purpose tractor. Financial economies can be achieved from either high scale or high scope, but specialty crop producers, especially smaller ones, tend to need machines that can do different tasks if they are hoping to replace human labor. Scope remains difficult for farm automation in specialty crops.

The bottom line remains the same. Farm automation and technology will be a significant part of the farm future in the U.S., but it is not a quick and easy solution to the labor challenges the industry will face in the near future.

By Richard Stup, Cornell University. Permission granted to repost, quote, and reprint with author attribution.
The post Automation won’t replace farm labor anytime soon appeared in The Ag Workforce Journal.