The new hire is smart, strong and keen, but lacks common sense and just doesn’t seem to understand even the simplest concepts in animal care.

Effective training is a common challenge among farmers trying to find reliable help in a labour vacuum that continues despite high unemployment.

Central Alberta swine producers John Middel and Wim van Wijk both confirm that they are having trouble finding the right people for their barns. Middel recently said that, even when he does find someone willing to stick around, he is at a loss when it comes to teaching that person the ins and outs of looking after his pigs.

There is a solution, says Joel Beatson, executive director of Landscape Alberta, chair of AgCoalition and a master trainer in Training Within Industry (TWI), an on-the-job training method developed in the U.S. and Canada during the Second World War, when most able-bodied men were heading overseas.

“In the next 10 years, 40 per cent of our industry is going to retire. The need for staff is going to double. Where the heck are those people going to come from? How are we going to train them?”

Beatson gave an overview of TWI during the 2016 Agriculture Labour Summit, held in Olds, AB on Oct. 26.

Thousands of women who had never held a wrench were recruited to build munitions and other equipment needed for the war effort, Beatson told producers gathered for the day. Sloppy work was not an option.

The on-the-job training method developed in those factories during the wartime labour shortage was so simple and so effective that it was later adopted by the founder of Toyota and continues in use there today, he said.

He described TWI as a four-part process that enables each worker who has learned a skill to pass it on to others.

Landscape Alberta had discovered the method after pursuing Red Seal qualification with the Canadian Council of Directors of Apprenticeship so people trained in Alberta could work in other provinces, said Beatson.

After receiving approval, the group explored TWI as a means of resolving training issues. Its leaders had assumed that qualified workers could pass their skills on. However, they discovered that being good at something does not make for a good teacher. Those who were best able to pass their skills on were the ones who lacked natural ability and had to break it down into its components.

TWI had been developed to fill a need for training that was fast, consistent and safe.

“It had to be safe, because a hurt worker doesn’t do more work,” he said.

TWI’s four steps break down as follows:

* Prepare * Present * Apply * Test (follow-up)

Beatson coached the audience on the process, using the method for tying an electrician’s knot as an example. Assisted by a volunteer from the crowd, he first showed her using a method that might be common for someone who is familiar with the trade, but unskilled at passing on knowledge.

He then shifted into TWI gear, told the woman about the task and the reasons behind it, walked her through it and had her try it on her own. In those few minutes, everyone in the crowd learned how and why an electrician’s knot is used. The method, Beatson said, is used on lamp cords to tie a knot that will not short out and start fire if the lamp is knocked over.

University of Alberta professor Gord Winkel, a former oilsands executive now serving as interim executive director of AgCoalition, expanded on developing a culture of safety during his presentation to the summit.

One of the difficulties in attempting to analyze safety performance is that it’s not measured here, said Winkel.

In the United States, on average, three of every 100,000 people die of job-related injuries every year. That number is more than double in Alberta, at seven to eight out of 100,000 he said.

Even more sobering, the number of people who die in while working on farms averages 23 out of every 100,000. There are no similar statistics in Alberta.

“What does that tell us? If you have no numbers here and you want to do research on what’s happening and you look there, what are you going to assume about us?” he asked.

“Could there be an issue here? What do you think?”

Speaking to the rapid and contentious development of Bill 6, which led to the creation of AgCoalition, he said an industry’s license to operate is developed in the court of public opinion, regardless of what the people in that court know about the industry and how is operates.

“If you don’t take charge of your information highway, someone else will, and they may have a different agenda,” he said.

“You’ve felt it. It was very disconcerting and it was frustrating and it was upsetting. There is a way through. Take charge of your future by basically determining to lead with how things are represented rather than wait for others to do it to you,” he said.

He encouraged agricultural producers to take the bull by the horns on farm safety, stating that collaboration is vital and that the sectors involved must be seen to be together, alive and speaking with a unified voice.

“When you’re seen as a sector it carries with it the force and credibility of an industry,” said Winkel. “You’ve got to engage. That includes government and that includes society and it includes sister industries.

“So, we move forward from here, and if you decide that you want to get on the path to sustainability and if you want this to be an enduring industry for all the right reasons, then you need to get together, you need to decide how you’re going to work together as a group, you need to set some policy and, best of all, you’ve got to work together on risk management.”

Alberta Pork is one of 30 signatories to AgCoalition, a group of farming and ranching organizations formed in January in response to the Alberta government’s revised farm safety legislation. •

— By Brenda Kossowan