LiveFarmer users see a 30% reduction in unproductive hours

Labour costs are one of the highest costs to a farm, with thousands of hours being spent doing the day-to-day maintenance of crops alone. Then you need to factor in the time spent on re-entering data into your main filing system. Followed by taking all the information collected from different spreadsheets and software, to create a traceability and compliance document. Admin and data analysis are severe time investments for most farm operations, and are accruing unnecessary costs to your business. By removing these barriers, you can streamline your processes, save money on labour, and make better decisions involving your farm.  

How does LiveFarmer reduce wasted productivity hours? 

There is no one way that you can increase productivity with regards to farm management software. There are several easy to implement solutions that add up to hundreds of regained working hours. Even something as small as restricting access to certain parts of the app, will improve overall productivity.  

Role-based users 

Some farm software solutions are not created with the end user in mind, making you set up each user individually. LiveFarmer UK’s farm management software allows you to create role-based users, so you can assign each person with the correct level of responsibility and access to the system. Creating a pool of workers, who only appear if they are available to do the job at a given time. The growers, pickers, and other labour-intensive workers, only see what is relevant to their job role. They get the job tasks they need to complete each day, and can only access specific parts of the software; stopping them accidentally editing something they shouldn’t. 

Accountability 

With more data points, you can better utilise your workforce. The farm app adds a layer of accountability, which has several benefits for your overall running of the farm. You can see exactly what jobs they have done, are in progress, and to be done. You can compare the data of each workers productivity, and identify issues. If one worker takes twice as long to complete a job, you need to know why. Conversely, if one worker is twice as fast, you want to know how, and if they are doing the job correctly. Accountability is not only important for you; it is also important for them. As they can visually see how much work they have done, and find ways to be more productive.  

Communication and teamwork 

Almost all jobs require some form of cooperation, and farms will especially require good communication. With a large percentage of seasonal labour coming from overseas, English is their second language, and will need information to be as clear as possible. With each job, there is the ability to document any notes, so others know what is going on. Handwritten notation can be difficult to read, and therefore could be misinterpreted. Onscreen text is clearer to read; reducing the possibility of miscommunication. Another reason communication is key, is if the main worker on a certain job is incapacitated, and someone else needs to step in. With a centralised management software, all notes are stored and accessible on demand. 

Data analysis 

Collecting all the data from your workforce is one thing; doing something with that information is something else entirely. Data analytics historically required someone good with numbers, to get all the information from varying locations, and see what the data says. This applies to the field to crop ratios, and productive hours worked to labourer statistics. Are your workers spending a large chunk of time travelling between fields? Could you alter their workload to reduce the time spent in transit? When a job needs to be done, it is usually given to the labourer, they do it and come back. With on demand access to the job list, they can see where they are going next, without having to return to base. Alternatively, they can clump multiple jobs into one trip, even further reducing travel times. 

What can LiveFarmer do if there are staffing issues?  

Absences 

There is no way to predict certain things in life; such as illness or injury. If someone cannot work, then you need to act quickly to keep the business operating. You may have a team member you can call upon to step in and swap days off around, or you could add parts of their workload onto others. This ensures no one person is required to take too much on, but still gets the vital jobs done in time. 

Understaffed 

If you are just completely understaffed, due to any number of reasons, then you need to know as soon as possible. When allocating tasks, you see the pool of workers or teams, and can assess if you have enough people. You may be able to increase the workloads of each person, but what happens if this is not possible? You will need to reschedule certain jobs to different days, which then will automatically update harvests dates and other tasks accordingly.  

Clashing personalities 

Identifying that there is a morale issue is not always easy. In some cases, someone may speak up, in others, it will just bubble under the surface. There are different reasons why morale can be affected, but one key problem is when two people just don’t get along. When people clash, it can create a hostile environment, which will lower productivity. You can allocate certain people to teams in LiveFarmer, which won’t allow you to put certain people together. 

Pairing people together 

The main purpose of the team feature in the app, is to group workers together. If you needed to deploy six workers to a field, five of which are the fastest on site, and one is the slowest, you won’t even out the time spent. The slower worker will bring everyone else down to their speed, which is a problem. Using the data collected over time, you can fairly assess who should work together. Putting the six fastest workers together, and the six slowest workers together, so you don’t reduce overall performance.