Good pay is necessary, but often it is not enough: once the wage is fair, how you manage people is a large part of why a good worker stays, and you can check that yourself on a sheet of paper. On it you answer four questions, yes or no. Next to each no you write the document that would turn it into a yes, such as a list of duties for each job or a plan for a new hire’s first day. What you check on this sheet is your own management, not any worker’s performance.
These are the four questions. Does each person have in writing what their job is responsible for? Did the last new hire get a planned first day? Do praise and raises follow a written rule? Does your manager, or your foreman if you have no manager, have in writing what he may decide without you?
Stanley Moore, of Michigan State University Extension, and colleagues published a 2020 study in the Journal of Dairy Science. In it, 168 employees on 12 large US dairy farms rated their employers on a list of questions about how the farm was managed.
Employees reported a higher intention to stay on the farm when employers scored higher on questions about the relationship between employer and employee. Of all the management questions, those about that relationship were the ones that went with staying. That was a dozen dairies in one country, so on your farm the link may be stronger or weaker.
Maybe this has happened to you. You paid someone above the going rate, gave them housing, added health insurance, and they left anyway. It is easy to blame the labor market, young people who no longer want farm work, or families moving to town, all things you cannot change. The sheet is for the part you can change.
Why isn’t a bigger paycheck enough to keep someone?
Because pay is what gets a person to take the job, and on its own it often does not keep them when the work gets hard. That does not mean money does not matter. Thinking another raise fixes everything is a mistake, and so is thinking pay does not count at all.
Sara Rynes, a management professor at the University of Iowa, and two colleagues reviewed decades of research on pay in 2004, in the journal Human Resource Management. They found that pay is much more important in people’s actual choices and behaviors than it is in their self-reports of what motivates them, and that it is not equally important in all situations or to all individuals. Those studies were of workers in general, not farm workers.
Still, the lesson holds up: pay matters even to a worker who says it did not, and once the wage is fair, other things can weigh more for some of your people. The four questions on the sheet cover some of those other things, the ones you control.
Mallika Roy and colleagues, at Central Queensland University in Australia, studied banana workers there in a 2026 paper in the journal PLOS ONE. What draws people to that work, they found, is driven more strongly by qualitative employment conditions than by purely economic incentives: conditions on the job, such as training and support at work, counted for more than the money alone. That was one crop in one country, and the study shows which side weighs more, not by how much. When the wage is already fair, another raise may not fix what is making a person leave.
What keeps a person, if not pay alone?
How they are managed. Moore and his colleagues concluded from the US dairy study that “dairy farm management can improve employee retention and engagement”, that is, how a dairy manages its people can help keep them longer and more engaged in the work. They also noted that farm adoption of human resource management practices varies widely. So farms differ a lot in how they manage people, and unlike the labor market, that part is within your reach.
Each of the four questions on your sheet marks a point where, if the answer is no, a good worker may quietly conclude that you do not much care whether he stays. Each departure also has a cost, and with the calculator in how much turnover costs your farm you can put a yearly number on it from your own records.
What are the four questions on the sheet?
Each line of the sheet is one question you answer yes or no. For each line, the table of the four questions has the document that turns a no into a yes and the article on this site where you learn how to write it.
| Line | The question you answer yes or no | If the answer is no, write | Where to learn how |
|---|---|---|---|
| Job | Does each person have in writing what their job is responsible for? | A list of duties for each job | what each job is responsible for |
| First day | Did the last new hire get a planned first day? | A first-day list | the first-day list |
| Praise and raises | Do praise and raises follow a written rule? | A recognition rule, and pay bands (a pay range for each job) with a raise rule | the recognition rule and pay bands with a raise rule |
| Manager | Does your manager have in writing what he may decide without you? | A signed list of what your manager decides alone | what your manager decides alone |
Job and manager: does each person know where their decisions end?
The job line and the manager line ask the same thing about two people, the worker and the manager: does each one know where his own decisions begin and end? With a written list of duties, the worker knows; with a signed list of what he decides alone, the manager knows.
Mengfen Lan, of a business school in Macau, and colleagues did a 2025 study in hotels, not on farms. They found that clear job requirements give employees enough information to decide, which can reduce decision-making uncertainty, and that role clarity can enhance taking charge behavior. On a farm, a tractor driver who does not know what his job covers tends to wait for orders, and all that waiting wears him down. The fix for the job line is a list of duties for each job, and you learn how to write one in what each job is responsible for.
On the manager line, the question is whether your manager knows where his authority ends. If you never wrote down what he may decide, neither he nor the crew can see where it ends, and the first worker with a doubt goes over his head to you. With a written list of what he decides alone, signed by both of you, you can hand him decisions and still know what he is allowed to decide. You learn how to write it in what your manager decides alone. If you have no manager, the same goes for the foreman who runs the crew when you are away.
The first day, praise and raises: planned, or left to chance?
A new hire’s first day and the way praise and raises are handed out are easy to improvise, and a worker can usually tell when they were. In the Australian banana study by Roy and colleagues, training and development and supportive work environments emerge as the most consistent and influential factors in drawing workers in and keeping them.
Training starts on a new hire’s first day, so that day is a good place to begin planning. A new hire who is handed a truck key on the first morning and pointed at a field may conclude that you do not much care whether he stays. The fix for this line is a first-day list, and you learn how to write one in the first-day list.
Praise and raises are where good intentions can backfire. Pay matters to people more than they admit, as Rynes and her colleagues found in the 2004 review, and a crew usually sees who gets a bonus or a raise. When there is no written rule, the crew works out its own rule from what it sees, and it may not be the one you meant.
The fix for this line is two written documents. The first is a recognition rule, so praise does not depend on your mood that day; you learn how to write it in the recognition rule. The second is a set of pay bands with a raise rule: a pay range for each job, with a written rule for moving up it, so each person knows in advance what earns a raise. You learn how to write them in pay bands with a raise rule.
Where to start
You need a sheet of paper and about half an hour. Each document on the sheet has its own article in the people section of this site.
Why fill in the sheet instead of blaming the labor market?
Because when you put a departure down to the labor market, there is nothing left for you to do, and that is what makes the explanation so comfortable. With the sheet, you look for the cause in what you can change. Filling it in does not guarantee that the next good worker stays. What changes is the question you ask. Instead of “what is wrong with people these days?”, you ask “which line on my sheet is still a no?”, and that one you can answer before the next person leaves.