Harvust

🚜🔬📊 Check out our latest blog post on the five most popular farm safety trainings of 2024! 🌾👩🌾 Our data analysis on @harvust shows that growers are prioritizing their employees' training needs, but there is still room to listen and learn from farmworkers. Let's work together to keep our workers safe and informed. #agriculture #HR #farmsafety #harvust #datapower #empoweringfarmers

🚫 Are you filling out the Form I-9 for your employees? Make sure to avoid these common mistakes and learn from others' horror stories. From forging signatures to neglecting H-2A workers, our latest blog post shares 10 things NOT to do when completing the I-9. #agriculture #HR #compliance

The biggest problem when it comes to discipline in agriculture is the problem you don’t know you have. I’ve heard from several HR managers about their “top of funnel” problem where they know their supervisors aren’t writing people up, because they hear about it from other workers. Leaving the question: “what am I not hearing about…” Without broadly collecting employee issue data it’s: - challenging to intervene early before the issue escalates from coaching to discipline - difficult to execute a consistent coaching/discipline program resulting in lowered employee engagement due to perceptions of unfairness and favoritism. - going to make terminations even more drawn out because of new DOL rules. - incredibly hard for HR leaders to formulate a strategy to increase their crews’ performance. Just some thoughts as we’re working on a new discipline feature for Harvust.

🔥 🌘 What role should a farm's safety program play when a hazard is best prevented off the clock? That's the question I've been asking as we prepared this training on working at night, which is becoming increasingly more common (Good Fruit Grower has several articles on this btw). A lot of the tips in this short training are things the farmworker should do before their shift starts. While safety vests, and lighting are important to engineer out the hazard during the shift, working nights is totally different for the employee's physiology. Changing sleep patterns result in fatigue, which can result in errors and accidents in the field. Without a doubt, what an employee does off the clock affects their safety on the job. But should that be the employer's responsibility? Is it even appropriate for an employer to try and change an employee's off the clock behavior? The employer will end up responsible if something does happen either way. So, I do think this training has a lot to offer: common sense advice, interesting facts, and important reminders. 📢 Side note about regulations: In California for night work there is mandatory supervisor-crew safety meetings at the start of each shift, could we see similar rules pop up in Oregon, Washington, or even federal OSHA? We'll have to wait and see...let's hope not!

In January, I posted our database for labor posters for Washington ag employers, well I've finally gotten around to publishing our Oregon database! California is still in the works. Check it out 👇

Does you farm's HR software actively work to protect you from litigation and compliance violations? Last week Sarah Wixson posted about the risks of communicating with employees in ways that could be perceived as inappropriate, that you'd then have to defend in court. An example she used was messaging employees after hours. For a while now, our messaging tools (harvust.com/communication) have had a little warning that pops up if you go to send a message after hours! We embed knowledge from industry experts right into the product so it is harder or impossible to make mistakes that could cost you down the road. It's a little thing, but it's the kind of little thing that could save you $$$.

Continuing from my previous post on work that does and doesn't qualify for H-2A, I was naturally led to H-2B. Just because you're a farm doesn't mean your employees only do agricultural work. Mechanic, trucking, packing, and other support work still happens. And it turns out that some of the stories I heard at the wafla summit about "non-H2A work" issues would be totally fine in the H-2B program. It turns out that there are a lot more differences between the two programs other than type of work, so I broke it down for myself. Check it out 👇