Informed ethical choices can help keep farms successful, says a
financial and human resources consultant.
“You may be bound by the law, but you need a higher level of
principle,” John Spencer of Clavet, Sask., told an audience at
Saskatchewan Pork Expo held in Saskatoon Feb. 26-27.
“That’s where success is.”
He said “doing the right thing” will sustain a business and keep
employees happy.
He referred to his own past involvement in a livestock operation that
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“dumped a lagoon into a creek.”
“We knew it was not a good decision, but it was legal then.”
Spencer said farmers must use both gut instinct and logic to make good
business decisions.
“A warm heart and a cool head is a great combination.”
Law and right are not always married, he said. A good way to test a
decision is to ask how it would make a person feel if printed in the
paper or if the family heard about it.
Spencer said decisions should involve others most directly
affected.
They should also be sensitive to workers’ work ethics, personalities
and idiosyncrasies.
Rather than looking at the immediate problem of high death rates in a
pig barn nursery, for example, he said farmers should investigate why
it is happening and explore issues of diet or ventilation.
Question whether the oil under a machine is a problem that just needs
to be cleaned up. Perhaps the business needs to determine if a buying
decision in the accounting department led to the leak.
“Until you know what the problem is, you cannot make a decision that
will give you a durable solution.”
Generate a long list of options, select the best one and measure the
results. For example, are there fewer deaths in the nursery?
Have an action plan on who will implement the change, how they will do
it and when it will be done.
The greater the diversity of opinions and thoughts, the more options
from which to choose, he said.
“You need different ideas to think about,” he said.
“If we do the same things over and over again we have no right to
expect different results.”
