The HR Support Most Ranch Operations Don't Know They Need [The Ranch Right Experience Episode 7]

0:00Most ranchers know they need better financial clarity. What they don't always know is what getting there actually looks like. I'm John Askel, the founder of Ranchrite LLC, and this series is our answer to that question. This series of short episodes walks you through exactly what it looks like to work with our team. From your first conversation with us, all the way through bookkeeping, consulting, accounting, and payroll. No fluff, just a clear picture of what the Ranchrite experience actually is. So you can decide if it's the right fit for your operation. Let's get into it. Welcome to a special edition of the Ranchonomics Podcast. Today we're going to talk about the Ranchrite experience and I am here with Emily Hobson, who is our HR advisor and Emily works for our company as well as working for those of our clients. Emily, welcome to Ranchonomics Podcast. Thanks for having me today. You bet. Well, let's jump in. You help people with their HR systems and let's first define what HR is.

1:00Yeah. So HR is a complete picture of your people management system. I would say it covers everything, the entire employment. So from hire to retire or hire to fire and everything in between, employee relations, systems, compensation and benefits and all of the good jazz. Cool. And you talk about it as people HR officially stands for human resources. So where do most people come to you needing help? Where are they at and what do they need? Yep. So most people come to me needing some pretty basic things, help with job descriptions, onboarding systems, occasionally employee relations. And I really try to meet our clients where they're at. One of the things I think that's great about our service is we're not looking to have a lot of red tape, corporate legal jargon. We really want to meet you where you are in your business and help you with practical tools.

2:02And so for example, we see a lot of the businesses that we work with are expanding. And so they may be going from let's say a sole proprietor type of operation to where they're going to hire their first employee. Are there things people need to be thinking about when they do that? Yep, absolutely. We need to be thinking about the legal document, which is the job description and what that looks like when we post it to the world, where you're posting it. And then what are our interviews looking like? How do we go through the candidate selection? And then once we've made that selection, what does it look like onboarding and their position agreement? How do we ensure those new hires start with success? I've seen from experience, it really makes a difference in our ag operations. When you start out on a solid foundation and have this really professional onboarding, it really can set the tone for a new hire and their runways with your business moving forward. Yeah, dad, do we see this so many times onboarding has such a huge long tail impact, right? The way things start are often the way they continue.

3:05A great. So then what do people need to think about as they're trying to build an organization as they're expanding the business? What are the important components there? All the pieces we want to make sure we have it in place? Yeah, really the job descriptions and position agreements with employees, those to me are the foundational pieces. We've talked a number of times and webinars and one of ones with clients to have a successful organization. It really starts with clarity and communication. And to set your employees up for success, they need to know what good looks like and they need to know how they win and how they help you win. So just those job descriptions and position agreements are really those key pieces. Once we get down the road a little bit, to me, it doesn't even matter if you only have one other employee in the business, you still want to have performance evaluations and it doesn't have to be twice a year quarterly. It can be once a year, but you need some regular cadence, have a set of expectations and a formal conversation with your employee on how they're doing or how they're not doing

4:08because as much as we love our employees to be mind readers, they're not. And so having those evaluations would be easier if they were. Oh, man. I wish I was a mind reader. It would make my life so much easier. Just so I don't want to be a mind reader. I don't know that I want to know. It might be worse. It might be worse. And then beyond performance expectations, employment policies, they don't have to be big legal documents, but just some general expectations of, you know, if an employee is on site and lives in your housing, do you allow hunting or do you allow them to have a dog or do you allow them to fish? So just some simple employment policies, housing policies are really important. And then if you haven't ever considered benefits, regularly looking at your employees' compensation and various ways that you do compensate them, not just their pay every week, whether you offer them a beef every year. All of that matters if you offer them truck, cell phone.

5:08And then just as we go down the line, coaching conversations, if you've never had a coaching conversation and you've had an employee for more than a year, I would say you're probably not doing it right because none of our employees are robots. They all need to learn and learn the right way. So you should be having regular coaching conversations and just because you're coaching, doesn't mean it's bad. It just means we all need feedback. Yeah, right. How about putting this in context of the whole organization with an organizational chart and those types of things? You help with that also? Absolutely. We can help with really simple work charts. It doesn't have to be complex. So we were talking the other day about an operational calendar. Yes. How important it is if you want to have truck talks on Tuesdays or if you want to have safety briefings or if you do projects and you need to know the three things that are always important to me are man materials and machines. Do you have all of those things ready to go for harvest or whatever it is? And so whenever we're planning, branding, what is your operational calendar look like?

6:12And you can roll in things like conversations about drought planning, your grazing plans. When do we talk about those things? When do we make adjustments? And so if you can kind of sit down and make that operational calendar, it can really help any of those systems, SOPs, we can help you with those. And the only thing I'll say about all of this, it sounds complicated but the more simple, the better. Yeah. Very good. All right. So that gives us a pretty good overview. Anything else we should cover that we are missing? Oh, I don't think so. I really just want to emphasize that when you need help with your HR systems, don't be shy. When you're working with Travis, Michaela or your staff accountant, just reach out. Let us know if you need help. Nothing is too small, I think. There's no question too small and for anybody who's never worked with an official HR office, I think you'd really benefit from just having a conversation and looking at where your operation is today and how we can always improve. I think one of the, like you mentioned, there's some misconceptions we've all seen to show

7:14the office or maybe most of us have and the HR department there would not be a good representation of what we're trying to accomplish. As with so many things on that show. There are lots of places where one of our main company values is being proactive and we try to help our customers be proactive. This is a place where it would always be better to get a little ahead of the curve here than to be behind. Does that fare? Absolutely. And I think one of the things that I forgot to mention is we want our clients to become capable without me. So part of one of the things I love to do so much and this is why I think John, we do the webinars is we want to work alongside you, teach you the skills, teach you the framework and the tools and then the confidence to go do them yourself. So it's one of those things that I don't believe all of our ag operations should be HR dependent. I think that we can teach you those tools and walk alongside you so that you've got that confidence in the future. Yeah, very good. Okay, love it.

8:15Emily, thank you very much for joining me today. Emily, you can be reached how through Travis and McKayla obviously or your staff accountant or account manager. You have a calendar link on our website, correct? I do. I do. Any other and then Kylin can get you hooked up. That's sort of thing. What else? Absolutely. Or you can reach me directly by email. It's Emily, e-m-i-l-i-e at ranttripelloc.com. Awesome. Very good. Well, thank you, Emily. I'm sure glad you're part of the team. You have been terribly helpful to us as we've grown and we've gotten a lot of great testimonials from our customers about how helpful you've been to them. So, employee issues, HR type issues, in my experience are kind of like the best of times and the worst of times, right? It's sort of like your family. The greatest happiness comes there and the greatest heartbreak comes there. And I think if we can manage that, well, we can stay more on the happiness side than the heartbreak side. So, thank you, Emily. I appreciate it. Happy to be here. Thank you. If what you've heard in this series sounds like what your operation needs, the next step

9:15is simple. And a free discovery call with our team at our website, www.ranttripelloc.com. It's a no-pressure conversation where we learn about your operation. Walk you through what working with Ranttripe looks like and figure out together whether where the right fit. The link is in the show notes. We'd love to talk.