Hoard's Dairyman:
FARM Program Offers HR and Safety Support
June 30, 2025
By Sage Saffran, Manager, Sustainability Initiatives
Dairy owners and managers are often looking for ways to attract and retain employees. That’s why the National Dairy Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) Workforce Development Program offers resources to support farms in recruiting, training and managing workers. The program equips dairy owners and managers with tools to enhance safe and thriving work environments.
Developed in consultation with professional and academic experts, farmers, and cooperative and processor staff, the program highlights best practices in human resources (HR) and safety. To support implementation, the program offers a wide variety of fillable templates, fact sheets, self-assessments and manuals.
The fillable templates cover topics from job applications to performance reviews, training logs and more. All templates are available to download for free in English and Spanish. Dairy owners and managers are encouraged to tailor the templates to their specific needs. State legal fact sheets, which are updated annually, summarize applicable state laws and regulations for dairy farms in plain language. FARM WFD offers reference manuals for both HR and safety topics, in addition to a fully customizable employee handbook.
Retaining labor is critically important, and prioritizing efforts to implement best practices in HR and safety can help with that. “FARM Workforce Development gave us an opportunity to review our existing safety and training protocols and identify areas we could strengthen,” Newmont Farm owner Will Gladstone said in a FARM Impact story. “It’s been helpful for both managers and employees to have written documentation of safety procedures and employee resources.” Gladstone shared his experience as a FARM WFD participant in FARM’s Impact Story feature, which aims to highlight farmers’ experiences with the program.
Additionally, FARM WFD uses an on-farm second-party evaluation tool to help farms learn about HR and safety management best practices, identify which practices will be most useful to implement on their farm, and track improvement over time.
The program area launched Version 2 in July 2024, updating the evaluation tool used to voluntarily assess and encourage adoption of HR and safety best practices on-farm. In Version 2, the evaluation was restructured to better group questions of similar themes and contains seven additional questions to further strengthen the tool surrounding communication and performance management. 475 Version 2 evaluations were completed in 2024 through 13 participating cooperatives and processors.
The FARM WFD program continues to update its suite of resources, including annual updates of its state legal fact sheets.
To learn more about FARM WFD, visit nationaldairyfarm.com.
This column originally appeared in Hoard’s Dairyman Intel on June 30, 2025.
