A farm is more likely to have better pigs weaned per mated female per year output when considering employee satisfaction — over age, experience or even pay.

August 20, 2019

2 Min Read
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National Pork Board

More than age, more than experience, even more than pay, swine workers’ performance is driven by the value of job satisfaction in their roles. That’s the latest results from a study led by Summit Precision Production, which engaged slat-level swine employees by using Cloverleaf and PXT assessment tools. Swine farms from companies representing 5% of the nation’s U.S. sow production base participated in the initial study engaging farrowing and breeding workers, supervisors and farm managers, and the results showed managers and others some surprising results.

For example, when factoring in the human element, the study found a farm was more likely to have better pigs weaned per mated female per year output when considering employee satisfaction, over age, experience or even pay. In this study, the measurement of successful employees was tied specifically to each farm’s pigs weaned per matre female per year.

“From a supervisor’s standpoint you would expect experience to play a large role in supervisor satisfaction, yet we found that job satisfaction and culture was most impactful to performance,” says Jon Hoek CEO of SPP. Worker satisfaction was also shown to drive whether a supervisor would hire that person again.

“As we historically look at individual farms, it is remarkable that nearly every one of them is not fully-staffed,” says Valerie Duttlinger, production analyst for Swine Managment Services of Fremont, Neb., which was chosen to conduct the surveys. “This underscores the problem that pork producers face and amplifies why these studies are so necessary.” 

“Both the Cloverleaf and PXT assessment tools utilized by SPP offers swine producers a means to benchmark their teams, assessing their strengths and finding opportunities to optimize worker satisfaction,” Hoek says. “We look forward to helping producers advance their overall profitability in a means that ties the human metrics of job satisfaction, culture and engagement to real results in increased productivity.”

SPP is leading the way to deploy new strategies and tactics that take animal production further than current technology can deliver. “We currently measure group performance metrics like rate of gain and feed efficiency. Now we can factor in the human element and its impact on proficiency in the barn,” Hoek says.

Boehringer Ingelheim and Provimi also provided support for the project. BI’s Kaylee Hillinger says, “At BI we believe in ‘value through innovation’ and initiatives like this bring value to all the stakeholders.” 

“Improving engagement and stockmanship skills of our pork industry workforce is crucial to the success of the U.S. swine industry,” says Mark Hulsebus, commercial pork director for Provimi. “We are proud to sponsor this study with Summit Precision Production and Swine Management Services as we further our commitment to helping producers achieve their production goals.” 

Central Life Sciences, National Pork Board, Pig Easy, Farm Credit of Mid America, Arm and Hammer, Swine Tech and PIC also provided support for this study.

Source: Summit Precision Production, which is solely responsible for the information provided, and wholly owns the information. Informa Business Media and all its subsidiaries are not responsible for any of the content contained in this information asset.

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