Valuing Ag Employees
Tim Hammerich
News Reporter
Labor continues to be a major concern for most farms and agribusinesses. In the few years that Trent Kubik has owned Elevate Agronomics, he’s found ways to show employees they are valued.
Kubik… “If you find good people, you need to treat them as such, you know, make them a pretty high-value part of the business because when it comes to the grand scheme of how much expense we have running a business and everything, that salary might seem like maybe a small piece of it, but take that out and all of the sudden it costs us eight times what the salary would’ve cost us.”
Kubik says eExpressing employee appreciation and providing good benefits have helped with employee recruitment and retention.are some of the things he learned quickly after taking co-ownership of Elevate Agronomics in 2020.
Kubik… “I’m not an HR person, nor is my brother, and that was probably one of the harder pieces of owning your own business that maybe nobody told you about when they said “Hey go buy your own business,” is figuring out payroll, figuring out benefits, how do those benefits work, what kind of benefits should you have, what companies do you go through to get that, all things that are not an easy thing to just roll into and do, but with that, makes it a little easier on our side and on theirs, is offering, you know, pretty well-compensated benefits and try just to make it streamlined and easy for them and for us and making sure you’re comparable in keeping them in a position that they’re treated fairly and, you know, we are too.”
That’s Elevate Agronomcs’ co-owner, Trent Kubik.
