Does Your Training Handle Stress
Robust Training is Revealed During Times of Stress
This is the inaugural post for The Pig Sourcing Group. We intend to bring a no nonsense approach in providing you information, current industry news and discussion topics, and maybe provide some entertainment along the way. Our goal is to help keep you informed of current production practices, market trends, and update you on any topic that will help improve the profitability of your operation. We are also hoping to spur discussion about the topics of this post, especially in one-on-one conversations. The Pig Sourcing Group strives to enhance your business success through integrity and building lasting relationships, and this post will reflect those tenets moving forward. With that said, we will start this blog with a subject that is near and dear to my heart, staff training.
“Pressure doesn't build character in a production system — it reveals it.”
The heat over the past few weeks has created a lot of stress on everything and everyone living within the hog belt. Perhaps some of you are like me and questioning whether you are now living at the doorstep of hell or maybe I’m just getting old and soft. Without a doubt I know the latter is true.
When profits are high and pigs are healthy, small mistakes during periods of stress from time to time for staff members can be absorbed by your business with minimal impact on annual basis. However, this never seems to rarely happen that all the stars align to allow for problems to be easily absorbed. Times of unhealthy pigs or times of thin or negative margins don’t allow for even the smallest mistake and very poor judgment by one of your staff members can create a large one that can be devastating.
This is why training needs to be a continual process and not just one that occurs when you on board a new employee or bring a family member into your operation.
· Training needs to occur on a regular basis and by regular, I’m meaning a minimum of weekly not when you have time.
· Simple and informal as asking questions while you’re working in the barns or taking a break, or as complex as reviewing PQA training in a formal setting.
· Take advantage of every teachable moment, because normally a teachable moment has created stress in your operation.
· Reprimanding is our first instinct – gather all of your patience and walk through every misstep and make sure they truly understand the negative impact that their mistake has created.
If your team has been busy with receiving pigs, loading market hogs, or working on a major maintenance project, and the person in charge of ordering feed for one of your buildings forgot to order feed and it’s Saturday afternoon, walk them through how much this is going to hurt that entire group of pigs and the impact it will have on the entire turn. This will create an opportunity for you also to evaluate this person to know whether they are empathetic to the pigs and whether they are devoted to you and want to do the best job possible. Their reaction will tell it all.
Resilience isn't a reaction — it's a rehearsal. The best production teams train for stress before it arrives, so the response is second nature when it does.
If you would like to discuss how to stress test your training program and create firewalls within your training protocol, please reach out.
We will be publishing regularly, so if there is a topic you would like us to tackle, please reach out. Stay safe in the heat!
