Dr. Maria Marshall Purdue University

Publish Date: July 2, 2012

Progressive Discipline is a process for dealing with work behavior that does not meet expected and communicated performance standards. The purpose of progressive discipline is to assist the employee in 1) understanding that a problem exists and, 2) that a plan for improvement is in place.

Publish Date: July 2, 2012

Time and energy available for human resource management is often in competition with time and energy available for financial management, strategic planning, or production-oriented decision making. Farm owners and managers are faced with a finite amount of time – as are all of us! Therefore, managers must make tradeoffs in determining how they will spend their management time and energy on the farm.

Publish Date: April 19, 2012

Owning and operating a farm business as a family presents unique challenges – and opportunities for rewards – to the farm, as well as the family. Two distinct sets of relationships must be managed in a family farm business: the personal relationships (among family members) and the business relationships (among family members and possibly non-family members).

Publish Date: April 20, 2012

Your employees are on the front lines of your farming operation; they are the ones who see the pigs every day, the ones representing your business to other businesses that you interact with, and in some cases, they may have ideas that differ from your own on how to best accomplish some tasks on the farm. Communication breakdowns are at the heart of many on-farm conflicts – whether between employees, between managers and employees, amongst managers, or among family members.

Publish Date: April 23, 2012

Working with family members can be everything from enjoyable, productive and rewarding to disruptive, frustrating and unpleasant. The closeness driven by work can bring family members closer together in satisfying relationships, but it can also create problems that foster hard feelings and drive people away from each other. All is dependent on the personalities of the persons involved, their understanding of their roles and their willingness to accept them, and the main management style. This fact sheet will focus on the family-owned and operated farm.