JULY 2019 GERMINATION.CA 21 One reason that minimum wage is being increased is to provide a living wage for baristas, waiters and others who live in larger cities, such as New York City or Toronto, where housing is more expensive. “A house in Toronto is about half a million dollars, so someone bussing tables can’t even imagine getting a house,” Gale says. “Outside of cities, it’s a different story. Agriculture is being forced to abide by city culture.” As of the middle of June 2019, there were more than 5,300 Canadian job openings on AgCareers.com. It isn’t just difficult to find help for the farm anymore. Labour is difficult to find in any season and in any industry. “Labour seems to be a universal challenge, or at least finding talent is,” says Michael Gunderson, professor of agriculture economics at Purdue University. “Food and agribusinesses are looking for leadership types and day- to-day task workers. Especially in leadership roles, there’s a great deal of turnover due to retirement.” A universal challenge across all industries is the retire- ment of baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964). “When baby boomers retire, they take knowledge with them and that is difficult for the next generation to learn,” Gunderson says. However, agriculture and the seed industry are a little more unique than other industries. While every industry faces the retirement of a generation, it’s not the biggest problem that agriculture faces when it comes to labour. Gunderson says the biggest challenge facing agriculture is the rapid migration from rural areas into urban centres. “This is happening across the globe,” he says. “Young people before and after marriage want to be in areas where there are more amenities near them, such as good school systems, good art programs and entertainment. But in agriculture, most opportunities that deliver value are in rural areas. It’s difficult to attract talent to those places.” Another limiting factor in attracting talent is the way that businesses are organized. Businesses used to be a structured hierarchy: there was the high management, middle management and lower workers. However, research has shown that flatter organizations tend to be more customer responsive. “Organizations have restructured to become flatter,” Gunderson says. “They’ve cut out that layer of middle man- agement in favour of more teams. Today, a customer might show up at a warehouse with questions, so the warehouse worker needs to understand a customer’s needs.” While this creates more positive customer interactions, it has its drawbacks. “A layer of middle management creates a pool of in-house talent that you could draw into senior manage- ment,” Gunderson explains. “As you get rid of the middle management, you reduce that pool you might need for succession planning.” Longing for Loyalty Another difficulty employers state is the difficulty to find long-term employees or company-loyal employees. “Many businesses are mourning the loss of loyalty to a business,” Gunderson says, adding that employees com- ment that their business isn’t loyal to them. “The rela- tionship between employer and employee has changed drastically. How do we balance the pool of talent where we have old, loyal eyes, but also brand-new eyes to drive the business forward? That’s a question many agribusi- nesses are struggling with.” However, Matissa Hollister, assistant professor of organi- zational behavior at McGill University, says that while many believe that employment stability has declined in recent decades due to employer tenure, initial studies to document this trend have produced mixed results. Hollister notes that there has been an increase in the proportion of older men who have been in their jobs for less than a year. Meanwhile, short-term employment rates for women have declined. Gunderson suggests that businesses need to look past employee salary and instead look toward accommodating both professional and personal growth for employees to increase retention, especially with the switch in generations. “If you asked a baby boomer to jump, they’d ask ‘how high?’ A Gen Xer will ask ‘why?’” Gunderson says. “Employers need to teach a little differently. New employ- ees are eager for feedback.” Gunderson also notes that agribusinesses should look at what their peers are doing — everyone in the industry is struggling with this same question. But don’t despair: there are ways to strengthen this bond between employers and employees to increase labour retention. “There has to be a commitment to leadership instead of management,” Gunderson says. “People are committed to a business when they are collective as an organization.” Gunderson recommends that instead of just expecting labour to show up 40 hours a week, leadership should act as their coach: empowering them to make mistakes, letting them know that they can do it and showing that they’ll progress in the business. This not only encourages employees to do better at their jobs, but it builds a better relationship between an employee and their leadership. Wayne Gale operates the Ontario-based Stokes Seeds.