Little things are big things when it comes to retaining your staff – as well as keeping them safe and productive.
We’re talking water fountains in your greenhouses and or including someone who speaks the language of your employees in safety meetings. That’s especially helpful when managing temporary foreign workers. And photos can translate the message even better than words sometimes.
These are some of the steps Windset Farms, based in Delta, British Columbia, took to improve worker conditions. Listen to how these initiatives came about and how they worked in the second episode of a series we’re doing on our “Tip of the Iceberg” podcast show.
The series is a partnership with Equitable Food Initiative, often called EFI. The organization works with retailers and growers to create a transparent supply chain, a safer food system and healthier work environments. These episodes will focus on the improvements companies and their people are making that elevate workers and create better working conditions.
Windset has more than 240 acres of greenhouse operations and ships more than 300 million pounds of vegetables a year.
One of Windset’s farms has a lot of Indian workers who speak only Punjabi, so the monthly health and safety meetings are prepared and conducted in three languages: English, Spanish and Punjabi. And safety mistakes are photographed for everyone to see in the meetings.
Related: ‘Tip of the Iceberg’ podcast: Stemilt’s Maggie Torres on traffic and labor relations
LeAnne Rhodes Ruzzamenti, EFI’s director of marketing communications, chats with Tony Pacheco, health and safety and temporary foreign worker manager at Windset Farms in Delta, British Columbia.
He talks about the Health & Safety Team and drills down on bringing water fountains into the greenhouse — a project that sounds simple in concept, but is not easy to implement. He also discusses the importance of being heard as a worker and not just heard – but having your suggestions acted on. It’s important that workers feel like the higher-ups care about them.
