“It’s important to recruit people who want to be a part of the bigger picture and are aligned to our values.”
Earlier this year, after enduring a considerably dry summer, Bannister Downs hosted an in-house pasture management course run by Dairy Australia. Holding the course onsite at Bannister Downs minimised disruption to daily milking tasks as the team could attend in between milkings.
“Because of the significant dry conditions, and the crucial recovery the cows need to make up as a result, it is important that our team on the ground are able to better understand the significant impact of feed to optimise cow health and production,”” Libby says.
“It’s really important that people understand why things are being done rather than just being told to do them. We don’t want the team to only be foot soldiers and it is great to see them engaged with learning and very quickly contributing ideas for improvement.”
When Libby first started in the people and safety role at Bannister Downs, she gained a lot from the Dairy Australia website to orientate herself to the specifics of the industry, even though she had studied and worked in human resources in her prior role.
“There’s a lot of good resources there about people, training and safety,” she says.
“If I needed to do a performance improvement plan from scratch, that would take up a lot of time. Dairy Australia has invested a lot of time and effort into building good templates and guides, I am very impressed and have found them to be a great reference in many applications so far.
Libby says a lot of people management is about listening to them to find out what they want and what their interests are.
“If people are interested in what they do then they are more likely to dedicate themselves to the task and it’s a ‘win win’ for both parties. We encourage our experienced people to offer coaching and work with a buddy system,” Libby says.
A lot of the team training at Bannister Downs is done on the job by more experienced team members and there are other advantages in this.
“Not only is there a safety benefit having two people go out to do a job together, but it’s a good opportunity for meaningful one on one learning” she says.
“By sending a less experienced person out with someone who knows how to do the job, the less experienced person can be trained, the experienced person has a helper, and it’s safer for everyone.”
Libby admits that it is essential to have enough team members to be able to take the resources needed for training.
“It’s a bit of a chicken and the egg situation,” she says.
