Want to Keep Employees? Work on Communication.

Our latest interview is a bit different that our regular conversations with economists. Today's conversation is with one of the top experts on employee relations, Jorge Delgado with Alltech. It's a great conversation about the keys to keeping employees healthy and happy, and building a quality culture along the way.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:13

Today is Monday. That's always a goal of mine to provide listeners with updates that they find useful. One of the things that I wanted to evolve to is being able to provide uh listeners with information that you know are face challenges uh to their business and their daily operation and their farms. And we all know that labor is a big part of that. So my interview today is with Jorge Delgado with Altec, who is one of the what I would call one of the leading authorities on uh managing the labor force, and really gets down to some practical thoughts and ideas and aspirations on how we can uh better manage the folks that work for us. So it's a great interview, a great conversation, and uh hope you enjoy it. Here it is. Um, if we could get started, uh just kind of explain your background and your role at Altech.

SPEAKER_01 1:27

Yes, thank you for the for the invitation. Um appreciate that. Thinking about what we do in the field. Um my role with Altec is uh it's it's very simple. Um when people is is uh working uh with our company um through the nutritionists, what we do is we provide value-added services. Um, one of the many value-added services that we provide is to uh work with the people behind the cows. So we do uh coaching, technical training, uh leadership, uh communication development. And in general, what we do is talent development for the dairy workers. So that's what's my role. So we go to the farms, and based on the need of the farm, if they have any issues with milk quality, with cows in transition, with calf care, uh, animal handling, whatever it is, then we try to um offer the service by looking at how things are and by providing feedback to the owners and then working with the workers so they can understand the the whys and how they're supposed to do those kind of things. But mainly and especially uh how important to make them feel how important they are on this industry. That's something that we tend to miss. So that is what we do.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Sure. So as you go around to different um operations, what are some of the you know, I know I know that there's a lot of challenges out there, but what are some of the more important or prominent challenges that you see that that producers face?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

As far as labor, uh, it will be, of course, you know, if you ask him, you know, any producer is it will be uh communication, right? But besides communication, it's gonna be mainly uh attracting people to this industry and then retaining that people in the industry. It's not so much about communication because at the end, you know, things you you can think you can figure things out, right? You can use technology, AI to for translations. There are so many apps right now that you can use to improve communication. There are so many ways to educate people, but the main thing is the the retention piece. That's gonna be the the main thing. Um so if you ask me what is the main challenge, it will be uh acquiring that that that person that person or the people that is working in the industry, but mainly retaining those guys. So then the cost of production, the cost of retraining and training is less. And of course, you know, it's more it's way more efficient, and then we can get to the benchmarks that we're trying to get to.

SPEAKER_00 4:25

Right. And it feels like we could spend three hours talking just about acquisition and then another three hours on retention. But um, so you know, if you think in your mind of some of the facilities that you've been to that do retention well, what are some of the things that they do?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

That is a that's a great question. That's a great question. Um these these guys, they have a they understand what they want. Uh they they have a a mission and a vision in place. And I'm not saying uh a mission that is just a mission statement, you know, posted on the wall. No. What I mean is that they know exactly what they want and how they're gonna get to that point using the people that they have. So those guys, when they have a clear goal and they involve people in that goal, they understand that people is very valuable. So those guys will invest on, like you were saying, onboarding, retention, education, and they will create a try to create a culture not only inside of the farm, but also outside of the farm in the community, in order for these guys to be retained, to be trained, to feel important, and then to uh get to those goals. So that is a short answer to your question. Those individuals are the ones that they will have success. And it doesn't matter the size of the operation, it could be you know 200 cows after 10,000 cows or even more. If they they have the clear goal and they know that that that will take people to get involved into to take those goals, that is the main thing.

SPEAKER_00 6:15

Um that brings up an interesting point. Um, you know, with when these operations are working with immigrant labor, do you find that they are more successful if they try to adapt to the culture where the person is coming from or try to uh migrate that their culture into our culture? You understand what I'm saying? Yes, what's the balance there?

SPEAKER_01 6:41

Yep, no, I I do, I do, I do. Uh and and that is a very deep question. And I was doing this uh on a dairy yesterday, actually. So when you hire people, you're gonna hire people from different cultures, right? And especially people, you know, when with the pool that we the the we source the employees is gonna be Latin America, and in Latin America is gonna be Central America, Mexico, and a little bit of South America. So the the only thing that you can do is to create a culture where where all those cultures they feel connected. Um it's gonna be really hard for a dairy farmer or any business, right, to adapt to each culture. So, what you have to do is to create a culture that will make those guys welcome into your culture. So now every individual will have a different personality more than a culture, right? So, what you have to do mainly besides thinking about the culture is to think about the personalities. And when you are looking into the personalities, you are to just to make it very easy, you're gonna have three basic ones, very, very basic. You're gonna have the ones that they they need a lot of direction, so uh a lot of guidelines, a lot of protocols, um, and you have to work with those guys in a very straightforward way. And then the second group is gonna be a group that you will need to be very charismatic. You have to motivate, you have to engage, you have to communicate, you have to find those ways to motivate those guys by being charismatic. And then the third group is gonna be the guys that you like that they like to be delegated uh roles and functions, right? You you delegate and they like to be delegated, they they feel responsible, they feel the trust. So, to go back to your question, the the key is that that owner or that manager has to have the three kind of personalities inside of them. So then you will connect to the guy who needs a lot of directions, the guy who needs a lot of charisma, and the guy that is very uh very responsible. So, more so than a culture, so the culture is gonna be the base, but then you, as a leader, as a manager, middle manager, owner, you have to connect with each one of them using these those three kinds of personalities. I think that's the easy way to see it, and you have to adapt. If you cannot adapt, then I think either you have to hire a person that can adapt to those things, and or you have to learn how to, otherwise, uh it's gonna be always an issue uh to create a culture.

SPEAKER_00 9:47

Yeah, and that's why you know the producers that I've talked to as over the years, you know, that go through expansion and suddenly are managing people instead of cows, that's a whole lot, it's a whole lot, that's why it's a whole lot more difficult, right?

SPEAKER_01 10:00

It is, it is, it's not easy, it's not it's not easy, but you have to do it, and and there's ways that you can do it. And and then in the in the transition, right, and or or in the learning process, you will learn yourself how to manage people and also you know learn from the mistakes, lame learn from others, and learn as you go, and also in the way, there's some uh hard decisions that you have to make. There is gonna be people, you know, going back to your question, that they are not gonna adapt to your culture. You wanna create a culture, you want to create a platform, a good foundation, or a good community, and you're there, and you can be these three characters, and there's still gonna be people that are not gonna adapt. And you have to make those cuts right away. Otherwise, you're gonna carry that onto your culture, and then you're gonna destroy your own culture, something that you're trying to create.

SPEAKER_00 10:56

Right. Um, one of the questions I wanted to ask, I know it's a little sensitive, but given kind of the climate where we're in in terms of you know immigration policy and so forth, you know helping employees feel safe, I'm sure, is quite important, not only to the culture, but obviously the retention as well. What what are some of the guidelines or what have you seen that have worked uh where you know those sorts of things are put in place?

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Yeah, what I what I've seen is so you can you can do two things either one avoid it, and then you're gonna have a lot of people making their own ideas and forming a conversations that you don't want them to go with. And that's unfortunately what the majority is doing, right? Avoiding. I'm not gonna talk about the topic, I'm just gonna put it under the carpet, and they will figure out. That is that is that is that is really bad. Because when they are trying to figure things by themselves, they go to the news and the bad news, they go to YouTube channels, they go to TikTok, they go to Facebook, and you are gonna find there the wrong news, and what that's gonna create that's that's shocking, all right. And that and that is what's good is gonna create fear, right? Yeah, and then fear will transfer to others. The others, the other way that you can take is to have a conversation with these guys, right? And it says, Look, this is what's going on right now, this is what we're gonna do, and these are the laws, you know. If you know the basic law is that once these guys are inside of the property and there are signs of no transpassing, there's nothing, no, no, nobody can touch them, right? Then the second thing is to be careful, to be cautious, right? If you're driving, please don't do this kind of things, you know, don't go to the bar, don't go to those kind of things, etc. etc. etc. What I'm saying is I I think we cannot avoid these conversations. We need to have these conversations, and when we have these conversations, we have to explain these guys the reality. What are the resources that we have, what can we do, and what are the things that we need to avoid. But the main thing is, and and I use these uh most of the time when I start training with these guys. What I told these guys is that these guys are very, very, very important in this nation and for this nation. Without with many of these guys, we are not gonna have milk and meat and eggs and and you know uh produce and so many things. So I make them feel proud so then they understand that you know their role here is way more important than they do, so they feel a little bit safer by being proud of you know what they do here.

SPEAKER_00 14:03

So that's how I approach these kind of things, like it's an interesting uh dilemma that we face, right? I'm where um you know I talked earlier about how it's it's it's difficult to manage people instead of cows, but now you add another layer of having to understand immigration rules and and laws. Where does the producer find those resources to be able to be educated about what they can and can't do?

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Yeah, there are there are so many, so many, right? And uh you can find it in any uh federal and government agency, they are very easy to find. Um local communities. Um lawyers are the main source for it. You know, every lawyer, every dairy has a lawyer, and the lawyer should have the person who has you know those resources for the dairy farmers. If you go to conferences right now, dairy conferences, most of those dairy conferences right now, they have at least one uh speaker on the topic related to immigration. And then if you see those topics, you know, all those guys are gonna cover exactly the same points. Right. Uh things that are happening right now, things that are proposed, things that we wish it will happen different, but at the end of the day, it's something that we that is gonna be really hard to control. So we have to control what we can, right? And the the the only thing that we can control is how the the people under our management in the dairy, the workers, the employees, they behave and that and how they are safe, you know, coming from home to work and from you know from work to back to their houses. That's the only thing that we can do at this point.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

Right. Um, I want to shift gears a little bit and talk about um artificial intelligence and you know, obviously AI is a lot of things that there's a lot of things related to AI that are used on the dairy from data management and so forth. Do you get a sense that um workers or employees are concerned about um either being replaced or adapting to an AI world? Or what do you see?

SPEAKER_01 16:17

No, I don't see any concerns so far, Mike. Um, you know, most of these guys, the labor force, of course, the entry level will be working uh milking cows, right? Feeding calves, uh, those and and moving cows. So those are the main three uh roles for entry level. So in those entry levels, which is the majority of employees in that uh in that area, uh it's it's manual labor, right? So somebody uh feeding the cow, somebody milking the cow, somebody attaching the units, right? Uh somebody moving the cows from the pen to the to the holding pen, holding pen to the parlor. So they don't see any threats you know coming from AI. Uh then you have the a higher level, which is going to be a parlor manager, it's gonna be a feeder, it's gonna be a breeder, those are gonna be the next one. And the people overseeing you know, transition, cows, and things like that, taking care of health. Um, those guys, they also don't feel any threat coming from AI. Um, and most of those guys, especially the ones going through data, it it might be even easier and beneficial for these guys to have summaries of protocols, summaries of data, and especially AI explaining things in an easier way for those guys to achieve uh goals. But in general, no, those guys they I don't see any threat, and those guys they don't see any threats.

SPEAKER_00 17:47

Um, what about from a training standpoint? Um, you know, we we talk about you or you talk about the importance of communication and and making sure that um people find value in the work that they do and understand the value. Are there any kind of unique or innovative training methods that you've seen that that work especially well in that regard?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Yeah, uh the the best training is going to be face-to-face, right? Uh nothing new there. Um there are more and more people doing it, you know. Extension special especially in uh universities are hiring more and more bilingual extensionists to uh do these kind of things. More and more companies like ourselves are also hiring bilingual personnel to uh capture these area uh of training workers and provide value out of services to increase sales, of course. Um and that's gonna be the best tool, face-to-face. Uh but if if you ask me about something maybe new or a little bit newer, yeah, there is an application called uh Nobi, and it was um created by a dairy farmer from uh New Zealand. This guy was uh tired of explaining the the workers' protocols or creating protocols, written protocols. Um every time that these guys were exposed to protocols, they were always you know either uh skipping steps and things like that. And it happens still now. So what he did is he created an application that uses a mobile phone that can create a QR code to the protocols. So it's very easy. So this application, this app, uh using your phone, you can take pictures or videos of protocols. So just to give you a very basic example, so uh milking protocol. In a parlor, you're gonna have you know four or three steps, whatever, right? Spread deep, four strip, attach, and post deep, something basic. What he did is in this app, you can record or take a picture of every step and then put a description for this step, and then that app is going to create a QR code. That QR code can be printed and that can be posted anywhere in the break room, in the parlor, and anything. So the cool thing is, and it's very simple, that everybody has a cell phone, right? Right. So instead of reading protocols that are really long, these guys, the workers, they can come to the farm and open the camera, look at the QR code, and boom, the protocol is there, step by step, either videos or pictures, and you can see if they uh went through the protocol. So every time that there's a deviation, you know, they can go and look at the camera and seeing by themselves instead of somebody being there next to them, right? Explaining the things over and over again, they just say, Oh, this is the step. Oh, this is the second step, this is third step, this is fourth step. And you can create whatever you want. You can do skid loader operation, payloader operation, safety for silos, uh, dry matter, um, how to do dry matters, whatever you want. Whatever you want, how to do vaccines, how to tag calves, how to dehorn calves, how to mix milk replacer. Very simple. Um, so that is something that I think uh is really simple, is very cool, unique, and and a little bit new in the industry.

SPEAKER_00 21:39

So that could tie back to compliance too, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:42

You could go in and look and see what yes, because you can track if those guys they they they they they went through the protocol correctly.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

And then training uh uh off of that as well.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, that is correct.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Um as we kind of wrap up here. Are there any other comments you'd like to make um from all of the all of the things that we talked about regarding you know employee retention, just maintaining maintaining that good quality employee way of life?

SPEAKER_01 22:12

Yeah. I think I think the main thing, Mike, is you know, when you go to a farm, you ask these guys why you are here, a milker, an entry-level milker. And majority of these guys, they don't know why they are here. They know that they are here because they need to make money and feed their families, right? And yes, and that is valid, and that is extremely good because that's the reason why we're here. That's their mission. The problem is that most of the farms they do not include these guys in their mission. And if they have a mission, either that mission is created, and those guys they are not aware, the workers are not aware of that mission. So the farm and the worker are working in two different directions. The farmer is working toward quality and efficiency and productivity and environment and community, whatever. And the worker is going in a different way, looking just for an income for to feed his family and get done. But if you can get this guy to understand these, the mission statements, and the mission statement understand him and involve both both missions in one mission, then you have now a somebody that is a partner and not just a worker. So that is the main thing. If there's one thing only to take home from this conversation, is that every farmer should have created a mission, but that every single one, even the smallest uh milker that has been there for one week or two months or three months, should understand the mission, so then he or she feels part of that, and that will provoke uh engagement and retention. That's the main problem.

SPEAKER_00 24:16

That's great, that's a great point, and that's not something that's I mean, it sounds simple, but it's it it takes discipline, right? And it's a process, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it happens to all of us, right? I mean, in our company, there is a vision statement, and in our boss, it's it's very uh strict, if I want to use the word, in in that that we understand that mission, and and we can say, Oh, you know, it's boring, or oh maybe it's repetitive, or oh, who cares? But at the end of the day, it creates an impact in your life and say, Oh, this is the reason why I'm working here. Oh, it makes sense, and so that's why I'm going to do my best and try my best in doing this kind of thing. But in the dairy industry, that is something that we are missing.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

You know, and it also goes back to something that I've always felt is that you know, a large dairy is just like any, not just like, but it's it's akin to any other large business, right? You just mentioned the mission statement, and you know, even an entry-level worker at your uh your at Altec and probably understands what the mission is in that first week of onboarding. So why don't we do that on a dairy then?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

Exactly. It's the same. And then, like you say, this discipline, right? Right. Repeat it in every meeting, repeat it in every conversation. Create, you know, material that it will be around the work environment so that the guys are exposed to it and and make it personal and make it valuable and make those guys to feel part of it, so then they know, they know, oh, this is the reason why I'm milking cows today, and I'm part of this. There are some guys that are gonna buy it, majority of, and there are some guys that are not going to, and that's okay. But if you have 85 or 90 percent of those guys working towards a goal, and the same goal that you have, you got it.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

Right. And the the the ones that aren't that don't get on the bus, well, a lot of times you find a way for them to get off the bus, right?

SPEAKER_01 26:29

Yes, they they will find a way themselves.

SPEAKER_00 26:31

Right. Jorge, thanks so much for the conversation today. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

You bet. Thank you so much for the opportunity, Mike.

SPEAKER_00 26:38

Well, that's all for now. Um, big thanks to Jorge for taking the time to chat with me. I hope you enjoyed that more than it's kind of managed to be going to be used to leave on the ground and sharing.