When my wife and I started the farm, there were two managers -- people who spent at least 50% of their time in the office doing paperwork. It was my wife and I. We have foremen (women) who do some administrative work, but it's less than 5% of their time: sick leave and holidays management and conflict resolution.
From the very first day, my wife who is the brain behind the farm, made the decision to farm-out all administrative tasks; payroll, invoicing, and everything that could be done by a third party was done under contract. Dealing with government reporting requirements was also contracted out. None of this is particular to the farm environment. We could afford to automate the processes on our farm from inception.
Everything that leaves the farm is scanned and accounted for automatically. Every lorry that leaves the farm has been identified and its load and destination entered into our system. The only human interaction is the load inventory that is scanned in by the warehouse manager and the lorry driver. Two copies... Our invoicing is a reconciliation of what the wholesaler has bought, and the price that was achieved, this is also checked against daily market prices. The error rate is less than 1%. Our system automatically sends back to the wholesalers our price analysis and that is the basis of our invoice. The only human interaction has been between the lorry driver and our warehouse foreman each scanning the lorry invoice.
Our warehouse team prepares each load based on the wholesaler's request, which is based on a list of produce availability we send every afternoon. This list is generated by scanning of each produce box that is stored in our chillers (or freezers).
As of February 2024, My wife and I spend on average 10-15% of our time in manual labour...we did want to be farmers. Jennifer (farm manager) spends less than 10% of her time in manual labour. Our foremen spend less than 5% of their time on management. If we were a normal farm, we would have an accountant, and invoice group, and Jennifer, my wife and I would spend half our time on government paperwork (form filling).
Neither my wife nor I spend any time managing the farm, but rather forecasting and planning, especially capital allocation. My wife spends about half her time managing the ancillary businesses we bought. I spend 80% of my time on the farm. Of the two of us, I account for the lion's share of manual labour on the farm. I will usually assist either the pickers or the milkers in the shed, depending on where we have holes in the organization. I spend more time in the milking shed because the picking crew is now so large that missing one or two pickers is not noticeable. I usually spend a good chunk of my afternoons inspecting and repairing things on the farm (no I do not work alone...).
Yesterday afternoon (Sunday), I spent two hours with the sorting crew, as we had four lorry loads leaving this morning, there was no shortage, but more hands make the work easier. It also gives me a chance to spend time with our employees shoulder-to-shoulder. Again we picked this life, we wanted this life.
Payroll is a good example. Since we implemented an automatic time tracker, our employees remotely indicate that they have arrived on the job, and are at work, when they leave at the end of their shift they log out from their phones. They can also log out from two dedicated computers in the warehouses in the new and old farm offices. At any time each employee can see how many hours they worked, how many hours they were contracted to work, and how many hours of overtime they did. Everyone loves this system, and no it's not like Big Brother. At the end of the pay period, the timesheet is sent to the payroll company and to Jennifer for verification. 99% of that work is automated, and flagged are accounts that are outside of the norm. When David broke his foot, as an example. But we've had some workers work 30% more than they were contracted. This indicated that the team was short of workers. Almost no one works alone. The payroll automatically processes the payslips and eventually makes the direct deposit payment to our employees and sends them a notification of payment. Jenniffer's most time-consuming payroll aspect was dealing with David's payment because it was our first injury on the farm. It was a learning process!
Our objective is to minimize the management overheads on the farm. We initially contracted out payroll because it was just too much. However, their services are scalable and remarkably inexpensive. Less than £200.00 per employee per annum (and they provided the software). Accounting is the same thing, it's a service that is based on the number of invoices we produce in the year. Both costs are substantially below the cost of a dedicated white-collar worker. Technology and contract services on the farm have replaced the vast majority of potential white-collar workers.
At the end of 2023, we had 178 employees on the farm and another 105 that work for companies we partially own. 99% of the jobs are manual labour, as we have reduced the number of supervisors/managers dramatically through software. Our pie business is a perfect example. They started 10 years ago with two employees, they have 17 now (including the owners), who spend less time today managing than they did when they started. We brought in payroll, accounting services, and invoicing services. Even inventory control has been automated.
Technology will kill the white-collar worker that counts things in a business. What is irreplaceable is people who can do things manually (although we did see an automatic strawberry picker that was unbelievable at our last farm show in October). When the lorry decided to re-arrange our electrical main junction box on the new farm, the skill and the speed at which the electrician fixed the problem was a sight to behold.
That's the future of labour!
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