Producer Survey to Be Used to Develop Labour Strategy

By Bruce Cochrane

A survey conducted on behalf of Manitoba Pork will be used to develop programs and strategies designed to help pork producers address the challenges they face in accessing and retaining labor.

As part of its effort to develop an independent labour strategy, Manitoba Pork has surveyed approximately 30 private pork producers from across the province to gain knowledge on the challenges they face in accessing labor and create strategies to address those challenges.

Miles Beaudin, the manager of quality assurance and labour programs with Manitoba Pork, told those on hand last week for Manitoba Pork's 2015 fall producer meetings, labor has been an ongoing challenge.

Miles Beaudin-Manitoba Pork:
Basically we've asked questions centered around recruitment.
Some examples would be how many employees do you have in your barn to get a sense of the size of the operation, then how many people have you hired locally, how many people have you hired from abroad and so on.

There's also a set of questions revolving around retention.
Do you feel that you have people roll over too often and quantify that by what is your turn over rate.

Also we're asking about pay structures, bonus structure to see if there's any linkages between that and turn over.

The other area, we are asking questions regarding training and education.

Is education and training being offered on the farm, because there is linkages between that and turn over possibly and is there any human resources programs in place for training the owners, the operators and also the people on farm.

There is also another category of job questions.
We're asking for feedback on where have they been advertising, has it been successful or not and what other services would they like from Manitoba Pork Council.

Beaudin says the final report will summarize the information gathered and be used to devise programs and services to help producers address their human resources problems.

Source: Farmscape