For farming businesses, retaining and motivating dedicated staff is probably more important now than it has ever been.  As many jobs within agriculture are becoming more specialised and the level of skills and knowledge continues to increase, it becomes imperative that managers and farmers are able to provide a structure that enables the staff within their business not only to meet these changing demands but to retain a work life balance.   Personal Development Reviews are a structured approach to helping business managers ensure that the team is working to achieve the best for the business.   PDR process enables staff and their managers to set aside time to review and discuss how things are being done not simply just getting on with the job in hand.

The PDR process provides a structured approach to personal and job development. They:

• Provide a documented framework to discuss achievement and to identify training needs on a regular basis. Reviews need to be carried out at least annually and in the case of new employees more frequently.
• Enable reviews to be carried out comparing performance against past performance and against previously agreed objectives.
• Allow an opportunity to discuss job development from both the manager’s perspective as well as the employee’s point of view.
• Provide a structured approach to training that identifies core skills required by all personal and job specific skills required for a specific job.
• Provide a structure to reward high achieving staff.  In times of low wage inflation being able to reward staff is increasingly difficult.

A key feature of the PDR approach is that the employee is required to assess and document their own performance against an agreed set of objectives.  One of the outcomes of a PDR is that the employee is able to set and agree the objectives for the next period and to identify the training required to enable them to achieve the targets.  There are a number of well proven templates available for owners and managers to use in setting up and completing a PDR process.

For more information contact William at w.waterfield@fcgagric.com at the Andover Office or your local FCG Office.