To find out whether the work in each job leaves a record, take one job at a time (tractor driver, milker, foreman) and draw a table with three columns on a sheet of paper. In the first column, list the tasks the person in that job is responsible for. In the second, write the record that would prove each task was done, such as the spray log or a dated entry in the office notebook. In the third, write whether that record exists today and where someone else would find it. Each empty cell in the second or third column is work you can vouch for only from memory.
The first column comes from the job description, the written list of what the person in that job is responsible for. If you already have one for the job, the table takes an afternoon. If you do not, write it first, following the guide on what each job is responsible for. If you also keep a list of who holds each job, write the person’s name at the top of the table, so you know whom to ask where each record is kept.
Some work leaves paper without anyone planning it: the delivery note, the diesel tank log, the spray log. Other work leaves nothing. The foreman may check the fences every Monday for years, and nobody writes it down. You notice the gap only when someone from outside asks for proof, such as a buyer who wants the spray records for the field a load came from, or an auditor from a certification program your buyer requires.
Why are doing the work and having it on record two different things?
Because work that leaves no record can be vouched for only from memory, and nobody else can check what you remember.
Knowing the job well does not produce that record. A milker can know exactly what is expected, do it well every day, and still leave nothing behind that someone else can check.
Which record proves each task was done?
For most tasks, it is the paper that stays behind once the task is done, like the spray log after spraying. To decide which record goes with which task, you can borrow a question from the standard operating procedure, or SOP, a written, step-by-step instruction for one farm task. The SOP is not the record that the task was done, but a good one has a line for the record that proves it.
Lisa McKeag and a colleague wrote a bulletin on farm SOPs for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, the university’s advisory service for farmers. Its template has one line for who is responsible for making sure the task is completed and another with the question what records will you keep to verify the task was done right. In your table, the first line is already answered, because every task on it belongs to one job. The second line becomes your second column: for every task, you write the record that would prove it.
Gregorio Billikopf, author of Labor Management in Agriculture, a University of California handbook on managing farm workers, tells of a farm where anyone ordering fertilizers or supplies had to check the prices with three different agricultural vendors. The price notebook stayed in the owner’s office, so when the owner was away, the manager could not tell which vendors had been called and made all three calls again. The manager asked for access to the notebook, with each new call annotated and dated right in it. There the task is the price check, and the record is the dated entry that both of them can open.
When does a record count, and when is it only a private note?
A record counts only when someone other than the person who wrote it can pick it up and use it. The same bulletin asks this of an SOP: a good one is able to be followed by anyone with basic knowledge. Its authors also suggest a plain test: watch someone who is unfamiliar with the task try to complete the task correctly using the SOP.
Test a record the same way: hand it to someone who did not write it and ask what was done, when and by whom. If they cannot tell, or if only the person who wrote it knows where it is kept, you have a private note, not a record.
The authors add that the steps of a task are often stored only in a farmer’s head. An SOP puts the steps on paper, and a record puts on paper the fact that they were done. That is why the third column is for where the record is filed, not only whether it exists: when someone asks for proof, a record nobody can find helps you no more than one that was never made.
What goes in each column of the table?
The second column is often the one nobody has filled in before, because a task can be done for years without anyone deciding what would count as proof of it.
| Column | What goes in it | What an empty cell means |
|---|---|---|
| The task | A task the person in the job is responsible for, copied from the job description | The job was never described in writing, so write the description first |
| The record that proves it | The record that would prove the task was done | Nobody has decided what would count as proof |
| Where it is filed today | Whether that record exists, and where someone else would find it | You can vouch for the task only from memory |
Keep the table in the same folder as the job descriptions and the other written rules for your crew, which the guides on managing people on the farm cover one by one. Writing down what was done, in a place where someone else can find it, is a habit much of farm management rests on, and with the table you check that habit one job at a time.
Does a filled-in cell prove the work was done well?
No. A spray log can be filled in every week and still never match what was sprayed in the field: it exists, but proves nothing about the spraying. With the table you check only whether a record exists, not how well anyone works, so do not use it to judge anyone. You write it about the job, not about whoever holds it, and an empty cell is a gap in the paperwork, not a verdict on the person. Whether the work gets done as it should is a separate question. For that, another guide in this library shows how to keep count of a handful of numbers about your crew, such as how many workdays were lost to absence.
Richard Stup, of Penn State Extension, the advisory service of Pennsylvania State University, describes a later use of the job description: employer and employee can compare actual job performance to the expectations outlined in the job description. That comparison is about how well the work was done. With the table you ask something that comes before it: does any record of the work exist at all?
Where to start
One job at a time, one afternoon, and no software.
The table will not create the missing records, but with it you know which tasks you can prove and which you had simply trusted were done, before a buyer or a bank asks for the paper.