Write down what each job on your farm is responsible for, on one sheet of paper per job, and go over it with the person who does the job. That sheet is the job description. On it go four things: the tasks, the main result the job is responsible for, what is required of the person at each level, and the date you last went over it together. For a milker, the main result could be the quality of the milk that goes into the tank. A level is a step on the way from new hire to veteran, and you tell the levels apart by how closely the person is supervised and what they can decide alone.
The first job description takes an afternoon; after that, about thirty minutes per job. Write it at a quiet time, when you have no problem with anyone in that job. A job description written in the middle of a problem with one person ends up describing that person instead of the job.
Without a job description, what each job covers is kept only in habit and in people’s memory. When somebody leaves, somebody new starts, or a task falls between two people, there is nothing in writing about which job should have seen to it or what the job asked of the person. When something goes wrong, you end up criticizing whoever was on the job that day, and it sounds like an attack on the person, not a comment on the work. A hand in their first year and a hand with ten years are held to the same standard, which exists only in your head, so neither of them can check it.
Why does criticism feel personal when the job is not written down?
Because with no written standard to point to, the only thing left to point to is the person. With the job on paper, you can point to a line on the sheet instead: this was the job’s main result, and it did not happen. That holds for family members too. Nicole and David Widmar, in an American guide on managing farm and family, recommend that each person on the farm, including family members, have a job description of their own.
If nobody has told the milker that the quality of the milk in the tank is the main result of their job, they may leave it to someone else, and when you bring it up later, it sounds like a personal complaint.
Why write the main result and not just the task list?
Because on a task list you write what the person does, not which result the job is responsible for. A milker’s tasks might be to prep the cows, milk and wash the parlor; the main result could be the quality of the milk that goes into the tank.
Writing one job at a time also shows you where each responsibility sits. In 2006, Kathryn Brasier and colleagues, researchers at Penn State (Pennsylvania State University), mailed a survey to Pennsylvania dairy farms and asked the farmers to describe nine job titles one by one: the duties, qualifications, supervision and pay of each. Because the answers came job by job, the researchers could see who held the authority to hire and fire: the milking manager, and this responsibility was not found in the results for the other job titles.
On your farm, writing one job at a time shows you where the smaller responsibilities sit, such as recording the bulk tank temperature, shutting the gate at night and checking that the calves were fed. For each of them, you can also check whether it leaves a record you could show a buyer or a bank who asks for proof, such as the bulk tank temperature log; another article covers that check.
The farms in that survey were larger than the state average, so their nine job titles may not fit your farm. What you can copy is the method: one job at a time, with each responsibility given to one job only. If a responsibility fits no job, or fits two, you will see it as you write. One that often ends up belonging to nobody is keeping the work areas safe. Give one job the task of walking the shop, barns and yards and writing down which work areas fall short on safety; another article shows how to do that walk and what to write down.
How is the job description different from the org chart?
On an org chart you draw who reports to whom: a box for each job, and a line up to the boss of the person in it. In the job description you write what the job is responsible for and what is required at each level. You do not need an org chart to start; one job description is enough. If you have already drawn the farm org chart, which another article explains, and wrote the tasks in each box, keep that list of tasks and add the main result and the levels to it.
With the jobs written, you can also list who holds each job, since when, and which jobs depend on one person alone, so you see the gap before that person calls in sick or quits. Another article covers that list.
What is required of the person at each level?
A level is how much of the job a person can run on their own. The simplest way to write one is by two things: how closely the person is supervised, and what they can decide without asking.
In Australia, farm and livestock hands are graded in eight levels in the Pastoral Award 2020, the legal rulebook for minimum pay and job grades of farm workers there. Each level up means more independence. An entry-level hand works under direct supervision and has less than six months in the industry. A hand at the next level is responsible for the quality of their own work subject to routine supervision and exercises discretion within their level of skills and training, which means making judgment calls within what they were trained to do.
At the higher levels, the Award asks the hand to utilise Certificate III qualifications daily in the employee’s primary work area; a Certificate III is an Australian trade certificate earned through vocational training. It also counts time in the industry, from under six months at entry to two years at the higher levels. The certificate and the months are Australian rules. What you can copy to your farm is the rest: use time on the job only as a rough guide, and let supervision, decisions and the skill you have seen set the level.
| Level | Supervision | What the person can decide | What is required |
|---|---|---|---|
| Entry | Direct supervision; the work is checked | Little; follows set procedures | Less than six months in the industry |
| Routine | Routine supervision | The quality of their own work, within their training | More skill than a new hire; six to twelve months in the industry |
| Experienced | Checked from time to time | The day’s work in their own area | At least twelve months in the industry |
| Qualified | Minimal supervision | Their own work decisions | A trade certificate used every day; at least two years in the industry |
Australia uses these levels to set minimum pay, and those pay rates apply only there. For each job on your farm, write two or three levels, and for each level answer three questions: how closely is the person supervised, what can they decide, and what must they have shown to be on it? Where the Award asks for a certificate, you can write a skill you have seen the person use, such as servicing the milking machine without help.
Written levels are also the first step toward a written career path, the sheet where you write what a person must be able to do to move up to each job; another article covers it. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension, the university’s advisory service for farmers, is plain about why it matters: providing identifiable career paths is an important aspect of retention plans, and without one, you risk losing the employee to another employer who does.
When can the job description be misused?
When you, or the person, read it as a verdict on the person instead of a description of the job. At each level you write what a person at that level is trusted to do, never how good the person in the job is. Say this out loud when you go over it together. With the job description, you can stop holding a first-year hand to a veteran’s standard. But if the person reads their level as a grade on themselves, they may take it as an insult.
How the crew as a whole is doing you follow in another way, with the people indicators you track, a handful of numbers such as how many people quit this year; with them you see where problems keep coming back, not how good one person is.
Pay can stay off the job description too. In his Penn State Extension guide on job descriptions, Richard Stup lists the main parts and then notes that the following two categories are optional: pay and work schedule. The Australian Award ties pay to its levels. On your farm, what each level earns is a separate decision, covered in pay bands and the raise rule: the pay band for each job, and the rule for moving a person up inside it.
Besides reading it as a verdict, three other mistakes are easy to make. First, the main result is left blank, and the catch-all line “other duties as assigned”, common at the end of job descriptions, ends up being the whole job. Write the main result first and keep “other duties as assigned” as a small remainder. If the job is a manager’s, also write a separate list of what the manager decides alone and what they must bring to you; another article covers that list.
Second, the tasks get written with weak verbs. The University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension asks for operate, maintain and perform versus weaker words such as assist or observe. With “assist”, two people can each believe the task was the other one’s. Third, a level with no review date can leave a person stuck on it for years. With a review date, you look at the level again, and it stays a description of where the person is now, not a label for good.
Where to start
One job at a time, on paper, about thirty minutes each once the first is done.
When you hire for a job, start from what you wrote for the level you are hiring into. In a written hiring process, the steps you follow each time a job opens, that becomes the list of what the job requires, so you do not have to invent one in the week the vacancy opens. On the new hire’s first day, hand over their job description along with everything else on the first-day list, the one sheet where you record what a new worker is given and shown on day one.
Once everyone has their job description, record that each person received it, with the date and their signature, so that if there is ever a disagreement you can show they were given it; another article covers that record.
Leaving jobs unwritten can feel flexible, but it makes criticism sound personal, because there is no written standard to point to instead. With a job description, “he let me down” becomes “at his level, the job called for this and it did not get done”, and that is a problem the two of you can work on together. Deciding on paper who does what, before the work starts, is one of the plainest parts of farm management, and the other articles on managing people on the farm start from the job descriptions you write here.