100% of our new workers are hired based on recommendations of current employees. Jennifer even had an instance of a current employee calling her about a member of her family saying look the person has asked me to recommend her. but she is always late at her current job, and it was the same everywhere else she worked. Granted that was an extreme case.
Most of the time the people we hire have come for temporary work and stayed because of other reasons. A large percentage of our pickers are women but in our case, it is women who prefer part-time work on a strict schedule (e.g every morning three mornings a week). Our work is never split shifts (2 in the morning and two in the afternoon), and there is always the possibility of advancement. Generally, we have postings for full-time positions once or twice a month. There has only been two or three cases where the full-time employees joined us directly (I think it was a heavy equipment operator).
I should note that we don't use our part-time workers as a test bed for full-time employees, we have many part-time employees that remain part-time, but many of our employees see changes in their work/life balance. Jennifer was a perfect example. A change in her marital status "forced" her to reconsider her work needs. Where we can, we adapt, and I can remember only a few instances where we were not able to accommodate our workers. The strategy we deployed on the farm we also now use in our other business.
Employee turnover is very expensive. Aside from the two morons who tried to drive a farm cart through a wall we've had no trouble employee. I presume that employees act up when they are being ignored or disrespected by the leaders or owners. Every single one of our foremen (person?) does the same job as the people who work for them, the foreman, Jennifer, my wife and I are often be on the line when some of our workers are suddenly absent, a real consequence of having young mothers who must sometimes deal with real family issues. 99% of the time they will find their replacements, although it is not their responsibility. I was thinking of that this morning, as I helped our goat milking crew, which had two missing in action, the first one found her own replacement and the second too, but the replacement got into a car accident on her way to work. The replacement called Jennifer at 5 am, who called me (it's a deal we have Jennifer). Hence this morning I was having a nice morning milking goats (although I was asked to herd the goats around rather than doing the milking proper. They don't trust me to be gentle enough with the goats...
This morning it should have been my wife, but she was in London for the birth of our first grandson, it happened last night for those keeping score. Congrats kids!
Note: On the David. Yes he knows what I think of his hiring and retention practices. He knows full well that I would never work with him (or for him) I and several of our friends have told him on numerous occasions (I even refused to do consulting work for him)
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