Farm consultant Matt Harms with Aaron Thomas of Yarram. Aaron was one of the dinner guest speakers.
Benn Thexton of Thexton Farms, Gormandale, and MC of the GippsDairy Muster, Ross Anderson of Anderlea Dairy, Denison.
People attend the GippsDairy Muster and other networking events to gain new ideas and enthusiasm for their roles as dairy farmers.
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That was the summation from muster dinner MC, Stu Griffin, who — with wife Belinda — has a dairy farm at Westbury.
“Milking cows and growing grass is easy,” he said.
“Increasing business size is linear to what you’re doing, or planning to do.
“Employing people is the challenge, and getting the skills to develop people and teams is necessary for our business.”
That was the introduction to two guest speakers. One, Aaron Thomas, spoke about building resilience. The other, Sally Murfett, spoke about her experiences advising people about employment structures.
Aaron said one of the challenges he constantly dealt with is “getting out of my own way”.
That led him to successfully applying for the Australian Rural Leadership Foundation program, supported by a Gardiner Foundation scholarship.
“The ARLP has helped me to identify a clear path for myself. I’ve learned leadership is about listening,” Aaron said.
That has enabled him to consider what he wants his future in the dairy industry to look like, and work towards that goal.
Sally Murfett spoke about the opportunities and challenges of employing people.
In particular, 50 per cent of the available workforce were millennials and their employment expectations were changing the employment landscape.
“They want to know why they should work for you above anyone else,” Sally said.
Extrapolating this into the workplace, owners and managers heavily influence team engagement.
“Build your awareness of how you show up and your effect on other people,” Sally said.
“The manager can have a 70 per cent influence on absences, task completion and workplace safety.
“An employee is 10 times more likely to quit a job based on the culture in the workplace — how they feel about that job when they wake up to go to work.”
Sally also pointed out up to 2.5 hours a day can be wasted in the workplace by miscommunication or poor communication about roles and responsibilities and tasks that need completing.
“Create systems that work, hire the right people, and get out of the way of your teams.”
Shane and Liz Byrne of Murray Dairy, with Sally Murfett, guest speaker at the dinner, and Stu Griffin of Westbury, who was also MC for the muster dinner.
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