14 | Focus on workplace culture rewarded Aquila Sustainable Farming took out the Blue River Dairy Workplace Wellbeing Award at the 2021 Southland Business Excellence awards. Richard Loader The grass looks greener at the six Southland organic dairy farms managed by Aquila Sustainable Farming Limited (ASF), and it is not just about rain and sunshine When new members join the farm team they often say everything really is just as good, just as green, as they had heard it was, and that has a lot to do with workplace wellbeing and culture. Proving just how good things are, Aquila Sustainable Farming won the Blue River Dairy Workplace Wellbeing Award at the 2021 Southland Business Excellence awards. Winning the award was apt reward for what has been a challenging but transformational journey over a five-year period. German investment company Aquila Capital, purchased the dairy units in 2011 as a five-year term investment, engaging the services of a farm management company. Plans changed with the drop in milk prices and Aquila shifted to a longer-term strategy, investigating what it could do to set the farms apart and add real value. An organic pathway was decided on in 2016, and the following year ASF was established as a subsidiary of Aquila Capital, charged with overseeing the transition to organic. In parallel the new ASF management team initiated a bold shift in workplace culture with a focus on wellbeing. “Put on a scale, our journey started in 2017 in minus numbers,” says Compliance Leader Jason Craig. “Culture is always there — be it intentional or unintentional. Our first task was to demonstrate what benefits a positive culture would have on the teams and we did that by leading by example with consistent messaging and joining in with things like leadership courses to show that we’re part of the team.” Creating a safe culture where honesty prevails and people are happy to admit mistakes rather than hide behind them was also key to fostering the ‘one team’ dynamic. “The culture is based around support, leading with empathy, continual improvement and personal development. It’s all about our people and making sure we can give them the tools to improve and get where they want to be. We will never put a ceiling on anyone. If someone wants to do some training or needs help we will always be there.” ARABLE » Aquila Farms • Organic farms p16 Entering the awards provided a good opportunity for ASF to share to the wider community the achievements that had been made by the farm team, and to showcase the dairy industry in a very positive light. “We entered the award because we know we do really good things. We started transforming the workplace culture from scratch and entering the awards was an opportunity to reflect on what had been achieved. The award means so much because we have worked so hard prioritising our people, and so to be recognised for this alone shows that we are going in the right direction.” The ASF team first entered the Workplace Wellbeing award in 2019 and was selected as a Finalist, so knew then that it was on the right track, but had some opportunities to improve. Going through the application process in 2021 provided the opportunity to again reflect on what had been achieved since May of 2017, and that clear improvements had been made. One of the key changes was encouraging farm initiatives to come directly from the farm teams who put forward ideas for what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. “That’s where things changed. The farm team would come to us and say they would like to do a leadership programme but we want to do it in a different way this year. The ASF team would say brilliant, give us some ideas and we will make it happen.” In any shift in business culture there will always be laggards. Those whose values for whatever reason don’t align with the business and are reluctant to get on the train and take the journey. Jason says while staff turnover had initially been high, last season that plummeted to just 8%. “Benchmarked against any industry, that’s quite impressive. While the first year was a challenge, as those not interested in the new culture left, we created a system where our teams looked out for new team members who would fit the culture. We empowered them to employ those people and that’s when culture really began to cement itself. To be able to go back to our people and say that the award had been won as a team and that they were a big part of that was amazing, the sense of achievement for all our managers and staff is just incredible. They are so proud of themselves; and so they should be. A lot of our team members are very positive people who bounce off each other, and that’s a good place to be.” “The culture is based around support, leading with empathy, continual improvement and personal development. It’s all about our people and making sure we can give them the tools to improve and get where they want to be.” Barret Ag Ltd Ph: Kahu - 027 5183 448 E: barrettagltd@gmail.com FB: Barrett Ag FULL SILAGE AND BALEAGE SERVICE ALL CULTIVATION Including direct drill and strip tilling - precision planting EXCAVATION 20 tonne digger/grader, D85 bulldozer/roller, tip trucks and trailers PH ALEX 021 277 5308 HOME 03 225 5377 Paddock Cultivation from Ploughing to Sowing Dry Hire available Aerating Direct Drilling Ridging Mulching Dairy Lane Maintenance Tip Trailers • Vibrating Roller • Effluent Services Large Skid Steer for calf shed cleaning, loading Muck Spreaders etc 4 Muck Spreaders • 16,000 litre Slurry Tanker • Pond Stirrer • Umbilical Slurry System Sheep Conveyor Drenching, Vaccination etc • 3 way draft Enabling better people management and leadership in the food and fibre sector. 021 165 2004 | lynsey@primarypeople.co.nz | www.primarypeople.co.nz
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