How to improve staff resilience and strengthen your business

Volatility has been the one constant in agriculture and horticulture in recent years. Whether it’s costs and prices to legislation and exports, farmers and growers have ploughed on despite the continual changes they’ve been faced with.

And when faced with so much unpredictability, farmers and growers are understandably stressed – worrying about where to prioritise their time and efforts.

Thankfully, there are several useful tools and techniques to help you better understand the situation and give you clearer focus.

Business management expert Rachael Chamberlayne, also the Livestock and livery manager at TH Chamberlayne & Son, said: “Knowing what the risks are to your business and which ones to tackle first is really important. It’s no use hoping something won’t happen; having conversations with the other members of your business and making a plan for how you can lessen the impact or likelihood of something is the only way to help keep you and your business resilient. 

Benefits of a risk register

One tool commonly used to better understand a business’ potential vulnerabilities is a risk register – a document where you identify the biggest risks to your business, grade them and plan how to mitigate them. 

Rachael said: “A risk register is a great way to help you keep track of who is doing what.”

Taking the time to complete a risk register is a great way of helping you focus on the stressors you can control or at least influence. 

Farmers and growers who take the time to draw up a risk register often identify staffing issues as a high priority. So, what can you do to reduce the likelihood of experienced staff leaving and the impact if they do?

Focus on staff motivations to boost loyalty

Well, by understanding the motivations of your staff, you can inspire them, improve their productivity, and ultimately, build their loyalty to your business.

Setting time aside to talk to your staff and better identify the things that make them happy, the tasks they believe they’re good at, and the aspects of their job they most enjoy can be a great starting point for this.

Rachael said: “The team that make up your business, whether family or employed, are critical to helping your business adapt to the challenges it may face. 

“Understanding what drives your team and ensuring they understand what drives you can help gain their positivity and willingness to pivot with the business as well as take advantage of opportunities that may present themselves.”

Rachael Chamberlayne detailed more on this technique and others in our webinar, Resilient staff, resilient business. You can watch the full recording and access our free resources on this topic by visiting our Resilient staff, resilient business page.