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Top Dairies Have
EMPOWERED Employees
By Richard Stup
Dairy Alliance
There is a lot of confusion about empowering employees. Empowered employees have some
degree of control over how they do their job and what the outcome will be, while un-empowered
employees simply do what they are told. Theory holds that empowered employees will be more
motivated and productive than un-empowered ones, and research support this.
In the dairy setting, an un-empowered milking staff justs follow the boss’s orders. They come to
work, perhaps follow a standard operating procedure that the boss developed and handed to
them, and leave when the job was finished. They don’t worry about any goals, because the boss
doesn’t share that information with them. Any changes are the responsibility of the boss.
Employees in such a situation are unmotivated and turnover is high.
An empowered milking staff, on the other hand, is well aware of the purpose and performance
goals of the dairy operation. They have a team spirit of working together to accomplish
challenging goals. They learn about dairy management from the farm press, educational
meetings, and other sources and bring fresh ideas to the dairy. They even make decisions and
plans about how to implement the best ideas in the ir own operation so that even greater goals can
be achieved. Over time such an empowered operation will have a highly motivated and stable
workforce that attracts high quality employees. Performance will easily outclass the un-
empowered operation.
Empowerment doesn’t need to be a mysterious concept. The following graphic shows a
continuum of four stages of employee empowerment. As one moves from stage I to stage IV
there is a gradual shifting of responsibility and authority from management to employees. The
benefit to management in moving toward stage IV is better performance and motivation from
employees, not to mention increased time and freedom to tackle larger or more long-term
projects and responsibilit