At 4:40 on Monday, March 2, a dairy manager in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, reads a text from the herdsman: fever, not coming in. Nobody else has ever run the milking routine alone, from the first cow to the last wash. The manager pays a relief milker for the day and three hands to wait. In this example (invented figures, worked out below) that morning costs $608 in relief pay and idle wages. That afternoon the manager lists the farm’s critical tasks, marks who can do each one alone, and picks and trains a back-up for every task that only one person can do.
On most farms the work sits in few hands. In US farming, self-employed operators and unpaid family workers did 52% of all farm work hours in 2017, according to the USDA Economic Research Service. While the person who knows a task keeps showing up, nothing breaks, so the dependence stays out of sight. A critical task here is one that stops part of the work if nobody does it for a day. A back-up is someone who has already done that task alone, with the steps on paper and the key in hand.
How do you see which tasks hang on one person?
Start with the farm’s jobs, one per line on scratch paper, with the name of whoever holds each and the date that person started. Mark every job with no name, and every name that appears on two or more jobs the farm cannot do without. An old start date with nobody able to step in means one person has done that job alone for years, and much of what that person knows may never have been written. The critical tasks inside those jobs become the rows of the coverage grid.
Put the critical tasks down the left side of the grid, one per row, and everyone who works on the farm across the top, one per column. You and your family go in too, like any hired hand. In each box, mark how well that person does that task today. The table gives the four marks and what each one means.
| Mark | What the person can do with this task | What it means for covering the task |
|---|---|---|
| Empty | Cannot do it | This person cannot cover the task |
| With help | Can do it with someone beside them, not alone | Not a back-up yet: this person still needs someone who knows the task beside them |
| Alone | Can do it start to finish, with nobody checking | This person can stand in, but the task is covered only when at least two people are marked “alone” or “can teach” |
| Can teach | Can do it and train someone else | This person can stand in and can train the next back-up |
Then circle every row where at most one person is marked “alone” or “can teach”. Those tasks depend on one person or on nobody. A row with nobody marked is the most exposed, because today no one does that task without help.
If the owner holds most of the tasks, the longer fix is a written succession plan, where you write, with dates, who takes over each decision.
When does a name on the grid count as a back-up?
When the person has done the task alone, with the steps written down and the key in hand. A name at the end of a circled row means that person could learn the task, not that they already know what today’s worker knows. The note at the end of each circled row lists what the back-up still needs.
Start with knowledge and practice, which come apart. Someone who has watched the evening milking for months may know every step and never have run the parlor alone. A good tractor driver sent to the grain dryer for a day may handle the machine and not know the grain moisture at which to stop. The person marked “with help” is usually missing one of the two, and it matters which. To move someone to “alone”, have the person do the task beside the one who knows it, while you watch and say what to change each time.
Next come the steps on paper. Igoa-Iraola and Díez reviewed how companies hand work knowledge to newer staff. They describe tacit knowledge as deeply embedded in the individual and reflecting a personal way of working, unlike explicit knowledge, which can be written down. On a farm that is telling when the ground is dry enough to work, or which valve sticks in the parlor. The person who knows the task writes what can be written, or explains each step aloud while doing the task once, and you take notes. Phil Tocco, of Michigan State University Extension, sets as the goal that a new employee could follow the steps and perform about as well as an existing one.
Last is access: the key or password the task needs, such as the key to the fuel tank or the login to the office computer. A back-up who knows the task but cannot open the tank still cannot do it. If you keep a list of who holds which key and account, check it for every circled row.
Which tasks are worth the training hours?
Only the circled rows. Training costs hours: the person learning leaves their own work and the person teaching slows down, in a week that is already short of hours. And nobody can count on training happening by itself. In a survey of employees on twelve large US dairies that volunteered for the study, Durst and three co-authors found that 11% said they had never been trained and 36% only when they started. Those farms chose to take part, so they are no sample of all dairies.
A task that three people already do alone needs nothing. Among the circled rows, start with the one that would stop the most work on the day its person is out. When Ginger Fenton, of Penn State Extension, talked with dairy farmers about emergency plans, the options for covering tasks when short-handed included cross-training employees and having back-up helpers ready. The grid shows you which tasks that applies to.
The calculation below prices the example, counting every training hour of both people as cost.
How do you keep every post covered through the week?
The schedule is where the coverage you decided becomes who stands at each post this week. Write one row per post, who works it each day and shift, and beside it the back-up, someone marked “alone” or “can teach” on the grid for that post’s tasks. A name on the schedule covers only when that person can do the post. Check that the person was shown the job and given the safety briefing for it; if you keep a record of who got which safety briefing, look there.
Write the rule for calling off too: who to tell and how far ahead. Post the schedule where the crew walks past it, not in a drawer. If you already keep a window for each field operation, the earliest start and latest finish of each job, the window tells you when the work has to happen. The schedule tells you who is there to do it.
When nobody is scheduled to cover, the missing hours do not vanish. They land on whoever is present. Elliott and six co-authors reviewed working hours and injury in agriculture, forestry and fishing. They report that the sector has the highest fatal injury rate among all industry sectors in the US, 23.4 per 100,000 full-time workers. One Kentucky beef study they gathered rests on what operators and workers reported themselves. In it, the principal operator’s odds of a cattle-related injury were about twice as high at 40 or more hours a week. How many hours are safe or legal is a question for your labor law, not for the schedule.
What do you write first, and how long does it take?
Write the list of jobs today. The grid takes an afternoon, with a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet and no special software, and the schedule takes an hour more. Then write two dates on both sheets, the day you filled them in and the day you will review them. A mark holds only while the person keeps doing the task. “Alone” was true the last time the person did it. Someone who has not done a task for months loses the touch, so watch the person do it once before you trust an old mark. A name at the end of a row trains nobody: until that person reaches “alone”, the task still depends on one person.
Read the grid to see how the work is covered, not to rate people. A row with a single name usually means the task landed on one person over the years, not that the others are less able, so keep pay and opinions off it.
Who covers what is one of several choices about how work is shared out on a farm, and it belongs to farm management as much as planning the year. The other choices about staff are in the people section of the library.