Forward thinking businesses understand that people are the key to productivity, profitability and sustainability.

‘Valuing our people’ has moved from just a rhetoric to a realisation by well-performing businesses that their capacity to achieve goals and thrive depends on the ability of their workforce to contribute to business operations safely and successfully.

Often businesses can’t, or don’t need to, bring in this talent. It can be found within their organisation already. The role of leaders is to cultivate the potential of their people; build upon the knowledge, expertise, and capabilities of the people they already have in their team.

This is particularly the case for agriculture and the dairy industry where the capability of people has a critical impact on the welfare of animals and food security for Australians and the world more broadly.

Accordingly, ‘people’ as a component of the effective farm system needs to be front of mind of all leaders within dairy. Small and incremental change in the performance of people can translate to significant gains in productivity.

Leadership of people on farm, supporting their growth and development, valuing their input to achievement of business goals, and providing them with a work environment that is enjoyable cultivates the next generation of dairy farmers.

The Dairy Capability Guide (DCG) sets the foundation to support a new culture of people leadership for a successful and rewarding career in dairy.

The DCG is one of many tools that dairy farmers can use to drive home the message that safe and capable people are an integral component to the farm business.

We are creating an industry where people are encouraged to contribute their ideas and help to improve the way things are done on farm and more broadly.

Learning and capability development opportunities will be available to support people in dairy to achieve personal goals in developing themselves to who they want to be, positively contributing to dairy production. The DCG will guide the industry to ensure this is achieved.

Farm businesses will implement processes on farm that inspire people to be the best they can be. Improving the capability of their workforce will be considered one of the core activities for farm business success. The DCG and accompanying tools will guide businesses to achieve this.

Dairy Australia presents the DCG to you and trust it will be a source of advice and direction to enhance the activities in which you take on.

What is the purpose of the Dairy Capability Guide?

The Dairy Capability Guide is a tool that will assist dairy farming businesses, people working in dairy, the people who are interested in entering the industry and the industry overall to understand the capabilities needed for successful dairy farming business operations. Through this understanding, people will be able to develop their capabilities to be successful in their work tasks and lead others at all levels across dairy farming.

The DCG will allow the dairy industry to establish, develop and track the necessary behaviours and capabilities over the longer term, ensuring we have what is required today and into the future to be a successful and sustainable industry.

Who does the Guide apply to?

The DCG has been built to support all people involved in dairy farming on farm.

As a person either currently working or interested in working on a dairy farm, the framework is a guide to build understanding of the behavioural expectations and performance in the current role, or to think about future roles and opportunities by:

• Identifying the capabilities required for the role alongside the specific role responsibilities.
• Getting clarity about performance expectations.
• Developing insight into any performance or capability gaps.
• Identifying areas for learning and development.
• Identifying possible pathways for future job opportunities and career pathways more broadly.

More broadly, the framework could be used by:

• Dairy farm owners and managers for mapping their employee’s current capabilities, future business needs and professional development requirements.
• Those managing employment processes on dairy farms to inform and write job descriptions and selection criteria, as well as performance management.
• Supervisors of teams on dairy farms to provide direction on expectations and a framework for providing feedback.
• Employees on dairy farms to understand what is expected of them.
• New entrants to the industry exploring a career in dairy.
• Students completing high school for careers awareness and planning and/or developing capability to be work ready.
• Industry bodies such as Gardiner Foundation or Dairy Australia to determine capability development needs, targeted extension and education funding opportunities.
• Industry advocacy bodies such as Australian Dairy Farmers and National Farmers Federation for workforce advocacy and policy development.
• Australian based recruitment firms and traineeship organisations to align prospective
• Skilled overseas labour recruitment firms, migration agents and individuals.
• Government – local, state and/or federal for policy in agriculture, compliance, and education.