Pick who will cover each task now, while the one person who knows it is still at work. List your critical tasks and mark who can do each one and how well. For every task only one person can do, name a back-up. Then write down what that back-up still needs before they can step in: the access the task requires (a key, a password, an account) and the steps of the task on paper.
All of this goes on one sheet of paper or one spreadsheet, in a table called a coverage matrix. The critical tasks go down the left side, one per row, and the people who work on the farm go across the top, one per column. In each box you mark how well that person can do that task: leave it blank if they cannot, or write “with help”, “on their own” or “can teach”.
Then you circle every row where only one person is marked “on their own” or “can teach” (in a spreadsheet, shade the row). Those are the tasks that depend on one person. At the right end of each circled row you add two boxes: one for the back-up’s name, one for what that back-up still needs.
On many farms one person knows the milking routine, another runs the center pivot, another keeps the office books, and none of it is written down. The morning one of them is out sick, that part of the work stops or gets improvised, and it comes out worse, often in a week when you cannot be there to check it.
Some farms keep a written list of who holds each job, such as milker, tractor driver or bookkeeper, with a mark on the jobs only one person can do. How to build one is in who holds each job. With that list you can see where the risk is; in the matrix you add who could step in. If you have no such list, you will find those tasks as you fill in the matrix.
Ginger Fenton, of Penn State Extension (the farm advisory service of Pennsylvania State University), recalls talking with dairy farmers about emergency plans. Among the ways that came up to cover farm tasks when short-handed were cross-training employees and having back-up helpers ready: teaching workers each other’s tasks, and having extra hands lined up. In the coverage matrix you decide, task by task, who that back-up is.
Why is it not enough to know which tasks depend on one person?
Knowing which tasks depend on one person tells you where the risk is, but it does not get the work done on the day that person is gone. For that, someone else has to be ready. In the coverage matrix you take each of those tasks and write who else could do it, how well they can do it today, and what they need to do it on their own.
Say only one person can run the milking, and that person wakes up sick. If no back-up has been named, someone decides at 5 a.m., in the yard, who milks and how. Jessica Skellie, of Cornell University’s agricultural workforce program, notes that when questions come up and the answers are not written down, a new employee may make assumptions or be hesitant in their work. Someone milking in place of the regular milker for the first time is new to the task in the same way. In the parlor, a guess or a pause can mean cows milked badly, or not milked at all.
What makes someone able to cover a task?
Someone can cover a task when they know what the task involves and have the skill to do it. A person can have one without the other. A worker who has helped with the evening milking for months may know every step and never have run the parlor alone: they know what the task involves but have not built the skill. A good tractor driver sent to run the grain dryer for a day may handle the machine fine. They may still not know when the grain is dry enough to stop: they have the skill but do not yet know what this task involves.
Before you count someone as a back-up, check both things. A person marked “with help” is usually missing one of them, and it matters which one. Someone who does not yet know what the task involves needs the written steps and a clear picture of the finished job, such as the grain moisture at which the dryer operator stops. Someone who knows the steps but lacks the skill needs practice beside a person who can already do it.
To move someone from “with help” to “on their own”, have them do the task beside the person who knows it while you or the foreman watch, and tell them what to change each time.
Why is naming a back-up not the same as having one?
Naming a back-up is not the same as having one, because much of what the person doing the task today knows was never written down. Igoa-Iraola and a colleague, researchers at the University of Deusto in Spain, reviewed studies on passing work knowledge to newer workers. They describe it as the worker’s know-how, which can be more challenging to articulate and internalize.
On a farm, much of the work is that kind of know-how: telling when the ground is dry enough to work, the checks a milker runs before leaving the parlor at night, which valve sticks. A name at the end of a row means that person could learn the task. It does not mean they already know what the person doing it today knows.
That is why the second box at the end of each circled row holds what the back-up still needs, and two things go there. The first is where the back-up will find the written steps for the task. If you keep a written description of each job, with what each job is responsible for, the steps can go there. If the steps are not written anywhere yet, the person who knows the task writes them, or talks you through them while you write.
The second is access: the key, the password or the account the task needs, such as the key to the fuel tank or the password 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, one line per key, password or account with the names of the people who have it, check it for every circled row.
Skellie, from Cornell, also notes that written procedures bring organization, clarity, and consistency to a task. With the steps on paper, the back-up follows them instead of guessing, and the task gets done the same way whoever does it.
What does it cost to prepare a back-up?
Preparing a back-up costs the time it takes to train them, and that cost is why you do not train everyone on every task. The person learning is pulled off their own work, and the person teaching slows down to teach. Those are real hours in a week that is already short of them.
So the goal is not a back-up for every task. Spend those hours on the circled rows, the tasks only one person can do, which stop the work when that person is out. A task three people already do on their own needs nothing. Among the circled rows, start with the task that would stop the most work on the day its one person is gone.
How do you read the marks?
Read down a column and you see how many tasks one person can do. Read across a row and you see how many people could do that task. A row where only one person can do the task on their own is a task that stops when that person is out; a row with two or more people at that level is covered.
| Mark | What the person can do with this task | What it means for covering the task |
|---|---|---|
| Blank | 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: they still need someone who knows the task beside them |
| On their own | Can do it start to finish, with nobody checking | Can cover. The task is covered once at least two people are marked “on their own” or “can teach” |
| Can teach | Can do it and train someone else | Can cover, and can train the next back-up |
When can the coverage matrix be wrong?
A mark holds only as long as the person keeps doing the task. “On their own” was true the last time they did it, and someone who has not done a task for months gets rusty. That is why you write two dates on the matrix: the day you filled it in and the day you will go over it again. Before you trust a mark from months ago, watch the person do the task once.
Writing a back-up’s name at the end of a row does not train that person either. Until they reach “on their own”, the task still depends on one person. With a matrix full of names nobody has trained, you can feel covered while the farm is as exposed as before.
Use the matrix 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. Who covers what is one of several choices about how the work on a farm is shared out, and you will find the others on the farm management page. Other articles on this site about managing farm staff, from job descriptions to reviews, are in the people section of the library.
Where to start
You need one afternoon, a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet, and no special software.
Many farms find out which tasks depend on one person on the morning that person does not show up. With the matrix, you find out on an afternoon you choose, while the person who knows the task is still there to teach it and write the steps down.