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A.G.R. Group Head of Human Resources on Recruitment and Employee Motivation
A John Deere tractor in a soybean field in Ukraine
Photo by: Latifundist.com
Photo by: Latifundist.com
The pace of labour migration in Ukraine has subsided in recent years, however, the recruitment process in agribusiness still stands out sharply. How can an agricultural company solve the problem of professionals shortage, what qualities of applicants to pay attention to and how to motivate them to work productively? The head of the HR department of Misak Khidiryan's A.G.R. Group Alena Khizhnyak shares her hands-on experience.
How the staff is recruited
I joined A.G.R. Group in 2017, the core staff in the regions had been recruited back then. My task was to recruit and build up the staff in the management company. This was successfully accomplished mainly through professionalizing our own staff and headhunting specialists from other agricultural companies.
It was easy to recruit administrative staff at the time, as the holding had ambitious goals and objectives — it was interesting for specialists to participate and realize their potential in such a large-scale project.
We give preference to professionals committed to the following principles:
- aspire to be leaders
- focus on results
- strive to innovate
- want to be engaged in favourite business
- have an unconventional, creative way of thinking
- want to develop and grow continuously, irrespective of external factors
For the interview, we prepare a series of questions or give applicants test tasks that allow us to assess their professional and personal qualities. Since agribusiness is always developing and scaling up, a lot of attention is paid to personal qualities and aspirations: it is important to us that he or she wants to develop. At the same time, they have to work and grow in unison with our business.
Our task is to give people this opportunity and the corresponding level of motivation. This is especially true in the regions and for highly specialized people. We carefully seek out and motivate such staff through financial and non-financial programs.
On motivation, both material and moral
As far as moral motivation is concerned, the following aspects are important to us.
Quality of life. Company management pays special attention to employee workload and strictly controls this process, maintaining a balance between employees' personal lives and work. In any modern company, understanding and caring for employees by managers plays an important role. Humanity is a strong motivating factor.
Based on my experience, there are a number of factors facilitating conditions to create a favourable emotional and psychological climate in a company.
- Increasing the level of satisfaction with one's professional activities.
- Solving interesting and challenging tasks. For example, in the agricultural holding, we are actively introducing elements of precision farming and make use of all the features of new machinery. This system of measures and technological methods enabled us to cultivate fields and apply fertilizers more effectively, and to minimize the negative impact on the environment.
- Reducing the number of conflict situations.
- Setting an optimal workload for employees during the working day. A department for describing business processes has been set up in the holding. Its task is precisely to regulate and analyze all processes in the company and to develop detailed job descriptions for employees in order to avoid overloading personnel or, for example, duplication of functions.
Involvement. The specialists have clear goals and objectives, and each person has his or her own area of responsibility. Accordingly, each person at A.G.R. Group not only has the opportunity to move up the career ladder, but also the opportunity to influence the development of the company. For example, all the innovative technologies that have been implemented in the company were made possible only thanks to the ideas of the employees.
It is the automation of accounting systems, monitoring of machinery and recording of agricultural operations. It's precision farming and the development of approaches to optimize the use of fertilizers. It is about changing crop production technology, adapting to climate change, and much more.
Implementation. We provide knowledge, experience, equipment and new technology enabling professionals to develop their competences and fulfil their potential all the time.
When it comes to material motivation, it is based on the company's principles: to reward fairly and in due time.
Thanks to all of the above measures, we have been able to reduce staff turnover.
On personnel reserve
The in-house talent pool is made up of professionals who have a successful performance and at the same time demonstrate a high level of commitment to achieving results. We carry out a professional evaluation. For example, at the beginning of 2020, the cluster agronomists were assessed for their core knowledge — all successfully passed the test. And there is no practice of dismissal based on the results of such tests. Its main purpose is not to reduce the staff, but to identify key employees for the personnel reserve, assess the degree of preparedness and determine the delta for further training.
We actively use in-house staff training in the divisions, involving our own specialists. For example, Serhiy Khablak, a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences, heads the department of implementation and monitoring of technologies in crop production at the agroholding. He developed methodological materials for agronomists on growing soybeans and corn, which we now use in training our employees.
Moreover, the employees themselves often take external courses on their own initiative. They understand that to change with the times, one has to constantly improve his professional qualities and competences. And training is received not only by top management but also by other categories of employees, depending on production tasks and the needs of the business.
The external talent pool consists of specialists who were successfully interviewed but, for one reason or another, were not hired. The pool also includes specialists who were interested in us during our analysis of the agribusiness market, yet are not ready to join us.
Naturally, we actively use professional networks, various forums, and social media. The employees themselves also take an active part in building the company's team, by recommending agribusiness experts from their business circle. In addition, we keep in touch with the universities and industry media who are willing to share expert contacts with us.
Alena Khizhnyak, head of the HR department of A.G.R. Group
