Are You Paying Your Employees Well, Or Not?

By Cornell Agricultural Workforce Development

While pay is not the most important factor in retaining and motivating employees, it does matter. If the compensation you offer is not enough when compared to other employers, then you'll struggle to attract employees and you'll always have a revolving door of employees leaving for better opportunities. On the other hand, it's good to know about what others are paying so that you can keep your costs in line. This year, we'll be able to focus on some key positions within industries: herdspersons, crop managers, crew leaders, etc.

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Participating in the 2020 Farm Employee Compensation Benchmark will give you the information you need to compare your compensation to other farm businesses and make better compensation plans. The process is easy and only takes about 10 minutes per employee to enter:

1. Select one or more employees who worked for you in 2020.
2. Gather your data about the regular and overtime hours they worked and how much pay they earned in 2020. Most farms will have this readily available in payroll records.
3. Gather your data about the non-wage benefits they received and how much the employer paid for them. Include items such as the employer-paid portion of insurances and retirement, value of any paid time off, estimated market value of any provided housing, and other items such as provided food or clothing.
4. Enter the data you collected along with other simple, descriptive information about the employee's position in the 2020 Farm Employee Compensation Benchmark.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 to enter data about another employee.

Farms with more complex workforces should enter multiple employees. Choose a few representative frontline employees plus any middle managers or even more senior managers in the business. We will collect information from a large number of farms of all types in New York and other states, and we will be able to separate the data by farm type (dairy, fruit, vegetable, greenhouse, etc.) in order to provide more specific and customized reports.

There is no cost to participate and farms who provide at least one usable employee entry will receive a report of the results and an invitation to attend a webinar discussion of the findings. All information that you enter will be kept confidential. Only aggregate data, with no way to identify farms or individuals, will be published or shared.

Please participate in the 2020 Farm Employee Compensation Benchmark today!