A close look at staff time can boost efficiency

Staff may be the most expensive resource on any pig farm, but have you ever wondered whether they are being used efficiently? Sarah Trickett reports

Efficiency on pig farms may be more usually associated with feed conversion and energy, and scarcely in relation to staff.

But with staff one of the largest variable costs after feed and half-an-hour a day at the minimum wage equating to more than £1000 a year, it’s clear staff efficiency could have a significant impact on profits.

And for this reason Lincolnshire pig producer Meryl Ward, Ermine Farms, decided to take part in an initiative with BPEX and Delta-Innovation, which used the Work-Metrics programme to provide a detailed analysis of labour use and efficiency on farm.

“I was intrigued to map how much time was being spent on different tasks, not to check up on staff, but to see if we had enough resource available in different areas,” she says.

Work-Metrics analyses efficiencies at task level, allowing an accurate picture to be built of staff costs for each activity on farm. Task areas include feeding, cleaning out, bedding, herd health and farrowing, among others.

The 13 staff across the two units were asked to record in individual task diaries what they were doing every 15 minutes for one week. “We did think recording may be a bit of an issue, but it wasn’t,” explains Mrs Ward. “All it took were a couple of minutes during the tea breaks. It’s important to do it regularly to ensure accuracy as the information you get out is only as good as what you put in.”

Once data are submitted, a summary is issued detailing how many hours are spent in total on the unit and on each task. This is also described in terms of labour hours for every 100 piglets weaned.

And at Ermine Farms the results threw up some fascinating conclusions. On one unit a mycotoxin problem was causing a higher return rate and consequently more time spent checking sows and bringing them back to the service house, explains Mrs Ward. “At the base level we knew the mycotoxin problem was adding more time on to the daily routine, but Work-Metrics quantified just how much time was being added.”

This problem alone was costing roughly 200 minutes for every 100 piglets weaned. “Compared to other farms, we were taking 50% longer in the service house. This was a real shock, as we didn’t quite realise what the mycotoxin problem was costing us in terms of staff time.”

This added cost in staff time means using mycotoxin binders would have been more easily justified, adds Mrs Ward. “It’s always a difficult decision whether to use mycotoxin binders, but in this case with the additional staff time and cost it would definitely be worth it.”

On the second unit being analysed, the daily routine in the farrowing house also revealed some interesting results, with the routine taking 400 minutes for every 100 pigs – again about 50% longer than on the average farm. “This made me question not why so much time was being spent in the farrowing house, but whether enough resource was available.”

Mrs Ward explains that, because the unit is productive, a lot of fostering has to be done, which is the main reason why more time is spent in the farrowing house. “The take-home message from this is to make sure enough support is put into the unit to maintain the results and to continue to rear the number of pigs. Work-Metrics helps justify the resource.”

The farm also has a high proportion of old, solid-floored farrowing accommodation which created a high workload cleaning out pens. “The Work-Metrics results helped justify a major capital expenditure to upgrade these,” she says.

In terms of the amount of time spent on the unit for every 100 piglets weaned, Ermine Farms is at the higher end of the bracket. “This isn’t something that concerns me. I would be more concerned if I was at the other end of the scale and was using the least labour. When you have enough staff resource, staff tend to be happier and, when stockmen are happy, pigs are also happier.

“It’s important when you have a high-performing unit that key staff are available and in the right places. This is just another tool in the management box – get the staff right and every thing else will follow,” she says.

And if more people were to participate in the Work-Metrics programme ,Mrs Ward believes it could have additional benefits at an industry level. “It would be interesting to compare, for example, a high-welfare, loose-housed sow housing system to the confined Continental system. Too often we are told some systems wouldn’t cost any more to run, but they may well do when looking at labour costs.”