Labor Turnover and Biosecurity: Avoid a Multi-Million Dollar Mistake
Biosecurity on the sow farm is where it all begins. If the sows aren’t healthy, the piglets won’t be either.
“There’s a lot of little steps to follow when it comes to biosecurity, but each step can be a million-dollar mistake if you’re not careful,” says Sarah Probst Miller, DVM, president, creative director and owner of AgCreate Solutions and of Pork Avenue Training Portal. “On larger farms, it’s a multimillion-dollar mistake if we let a disease like porcine epidemic diarrhea (PED) or porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) in.”
Whether it’s using the fingernail brush in the shower or not letting a socked foot touch the floor before they swing over on a bench system, Probst Miller says every detail matters when you're talking about preventing a bacteria or virus from walking onto your farm.
Biosecurity Breaches
Labor shortages have hit the agriculture industry hard and have become an even greater threat to the U.S. pork industry today. Although there is no cookie-cutter figure across U.S. swine farms when it comes to labor turnover, Probst Miller says some systems report greater than 100% turnover each year and others are closer to 15%.
This turnover makes biosecurity breaches even more plausible because protocols aren’t always intuitive, explains Megan Hood, DVM, of Reick’s Veterinary Research and Consulting.
“When it comes to biosecurity practices, it takes an extra step of training to help employees learn those steps,” Hood says. “We've found it not only takes going through the rules with employees, but they need some understanding about why that protocol is important. Otherwise, you'll have employees that aren't following the protocol all the way because they don't understand its importance.”
Hood performs biosecurity audits for farms and says she can quickly spot a farm with new employees when she opens the entry area to find shoes scattered all over the place.
“Usually when you cross over a bench, you take off your shoes in a certain way so you can physically get over the bench without putting your stocking feet on the floor,” Hood says. “If I see shoes all over, that’s an immediate red flag.”
This is just one of the little mistakes that become major openings for disease to enter in. Other breaches include employees trying to carry cell phones onto a farm, repairmen taking dirty tools from farm to farm in the back of their truck, or employees who live together but work on different farms – especially when one farm is PRRS-positive and one is PRRS-negative, Hood says.
High turnover results in added opportunity for mistakes to happen, especially if training is not consistent or employees are getting trained by somebody who’s only been working on the farm for a couple of months, she adds. Unfortunately, employees may get trained by someone who isn’t 100% trained themselves because of staffing situations.
Adults Don’t Learn Like Kids
This is one reason why Probst Miller has devoted her career medicine to training and educating others since 2011.
“When I left traditional practice, I realized that to change how people treated animals, I needed to be able to change people – specifically behavior in people,” Probst Miller says. “When we’re talking about training, we’re talking about instilling a particular behavior or competency in people.”
So, she decided to learn more about how adults learn. She discovered adults are quite different than kids when it comes to learning.
“Children absorb things like crazy,” Probst Miller says. “Whether it’s relevant to them or not, they’re going to learn their times tables and the states and capitals. That’s what kids do, but adults don’t.”
Science says if you give an adult written instructions and tell them to follow them, they’ll do it about 10% of the time, she explains. If you talk to them over the phone and explain the instructions, science shows they’ll get it right about 20% of the time. Add in a visual experience like a video, and people will be about 50% competent.
“But, that’s not good enough when it comes to biosecurity,” Probst Miller says.
In addition, employees often get nervous when trying to learn new things. If their adrenaline is at the right level, Probst Miller says they are more likely to pay attention. That’s why it’s important to devise training experiences that will get their attention, but not make them fearful or overwhelmed.
“We have to be careful,” she adds. “If adrenaline moves too high, mammals as a species tend to fight, run away or freeze and play dead. If a new employee is nervous already going into a new environment, their adrenaline is already at a tenuous level. If they are given a situation that is scary or unusual, it’s going to go past the point of them being able to learn.”
A New Philosophy
This is why Probst Miller landed on a simple, but powerful training philosophy of “See it. Do it. Teach it.” For every competency on the farm, we want employees to go through that three-step process, she says.
We start by showing them a video and then take people through a simulation of the desired end skills.
“That’s part of the seed experience where they are actually going to do those skills for the first time in a safe environment,” Miller says. “They are going to virtually put on booties when they step out of their car. They are going to virtually swing over the bench and put their clothes in the right spot, etc.”
The next step is to actually do the work on the farm.
“If the farm assigns a mentor to that person to do the task with the person for the first time, we're able to move competencies from 50% up to 70% to 80%. That's huge – we almost got a B in the class. But for biosecurity, we need an A student,” Probst Miller says.
The final part of the process – teach it – becomes the differentiator.
“We found that if that trainee knows they have to teach back what they learned to a mentor, before they even start the process, a little adrenaline hooks them into learning more,” she says. “That person subsequently engages. When mentors remind them the final test of competency is being able to teach it, they're more motivated to engage.”
The trick is actually getting to this point. Farms have to schedule that “teach it” experience. Allow the trainee the stage and find a good mentor or on-farm verifier to listen, Probst Miller says.
“Obviously, with something like biosecurity or animal welfare, if the person teaches back something completely wrong, you intervene and say, ‘Wait, don't put that sock down.’ Then you offer the correction and give them back the stage. ‘Try again, I'm back to being the student. Teach me how to do this again,’” Probst Miller says.
When a person goes through the three-part learning process, it moves them into that 95% competency range, which Probst Miller says is pretty darn good.
“For something like biosecurity, investing in that type of training is important. You can do it as individuals or as a group. You can do it using our tools or try it yourself by taking people through those three steps, so you know you're creating the greatest opportunity for success,” Probst Miller says.
Put the Theory to Work
Hood put this process to work in a research project she conducted at a boar stud. Her colleague, boar stud expert Darwin Reicks, DVM, worked with Probst Miller’s team on a series of learning experiences delivered on Pork Avenue with other learning experiences for a boar stud curriculum. Hood took part of the curriculum and put it to the test.
“Although my project was done on a boar stud, the concepts are very applicable to sow farms. If training is not consistent, things can be lost along the way and it can hurt your biosecurity,” Hood says.
Employees started with five-minute training videos that ended with a simulation-type quiz to make sure the employee was paying attention and learned what Hood wanted them to learn from the video. After the videos were over, trainees, along with staff members, performed the “do it” section of the exercise.
“They went out into the barn with the trainees and practiced what they had just learned – whether that was collecting a boar or crossing over a bench,” Hood says.
After performing those exercises, Hood had them teach her how to perform the tasks. She said she was happy with the results and shared her research at the recent Allen D. Leman Swine Conference.
“No matter what subject you're training people on, it’s important staff are trained the same way each time,” Hood says. “Then, make sure training materials are available in that person’s original language. Finally, give the training materials in a way that can keep that employees’ attention and not overwhelm them.”
Investment and Validation
One of the things that surprised Hood most after completing this project was the feedback from employees who felt like the company had truly invested in them through this training experience.
“At the end of the day if you are experiencing high employee turnover, the ultimate solution is to keep employees,” Hood says. “Showing our employees we have invested in them – through a training program or something else – helps with employee retention and solves our problem of high turnover which can lead to biosecurity breakdown.”
As humans, we are strongly peer-influenced, Probst Miller says. People on our farms are always teaching each other – whether we want them to or not.
“If I see Joe doing something on the farm a certain way, it usually overrides anything written down or told to me on the farm. But if I’ve been through the three-step training, I’m less likely to be influenced by peers doing it a wrong way. I’m more likely to stand up and say, ‘that’s not right’ because my mentor and verifier assured me,” Miller says. “We are creating people who are validated by their peers doing the right thing which is pretty powerful.”
During the process of mentoring and verifying, Miller reminds people they aren’t just developing employees, they are developing future leaders.
“We are good at creating good 'pig people,' but we need to get better at creating good ‘people people.' By giving employees the opportunity to mentor a variety of different people on a specific task, they learn how to flex different behavioral styles,” she says. “And that is wonderful training for our future managers. In the ‘teach it’ phase, they are learning the art of how to listen – a giant manager skill.”
After all, the best managers listen to problems and help find solutions. In general, research shows people leave managers not jobs.
“Good managers train. But what we are suggesting is that good managers train well – following the science of how adults learn. I agree people are going to stay because they have a good manager,” Probst Miller says. “A good training program takes a good manager and makes them great. Then, trained people start to positively influence other things on farms like keeping a multi-million disease out.”
More from the Synergy on the Sow Farm Series:
Employee Emotional Health: The Crisis No One Wants to Talk About on the Sow Farm
Invest in Employee Mental Health to Maintain a Successful Sow Farm
Don't Ignore Conflict on the Farm
Lameness: The Leading Identifiable Reason for Sow Mortality
Study to Investigate Potential Mechanisms that Control Uterine Prolapse Susceptibility
Can Genetic Selection Lower Incidence of Uterine Prolapse in Pigs?
What's it Worth to Reduce Your Herd’s Stillborn Rate?
Ease Your Gilts into Electronic Sow Feeding Systems
