Hiring Professional Employees

The Challenge

Like many operations, they were facing challenges and time constraints in handling their day to day financials. The growth of acres and adding entities increased the complexity and time involved of practicing sound financial management. They discussed hiring a financial professional, outsourcing to an ag accounting service, or keep trying to do it themselves.

Initially they struggled with the concept of hiring an outside person to handle their financials, plus they had never hired such a position and didn’t know how to do it. But they knew that if a solution could be found, it would take a huge burden off the owners’ shoulders, freeing them up to continue improving other areas of their farm.

The Results

As members of UnCommon Farms, the family tapped into their professionals, specifically the Human Resource experts, with these results:

• They were able to use a detailed job description, create a job posting, and defined expectations for the new employee, which UnCommon Farms already had.
• They were given in-person assistance to screen the applicants and conduct interviews.
• They had access to comparable salary research to ensure they were paying competitively for the position.
• They received established performance measures to ensure their new employee was prepared for success.
• The owners accessed management coaching and training to aid in supervising a “professional” employee.
• They have implemented a process to report weekly financials to the owners.
• They have established monthly financial meetings to ensure they are on budget.
• They have implemented a process to reconcile invoices and checks more efficiently.

Today the operation is thriving, and the employee has been with them for over 3 years. The assistance from UnCommon Farms allowed them to know exactly what steps to take in finding, hiring, training and managing the financial person (their first non-operations hire).