A FAMILY-FOCUSED WORK ENVIRONMENT

by: David Anderson and Ryan Schmidt, Agronomy Operations Directors

Despite a nationwide labor shortage, NuWay-K&H Cooperative has comparatively few open positions and a lot of talent in our employee group. We want to keep those talented individuals working for you; so, over the past 12 months, we’ve made quite a few changes to the employee benefits we offer. For instance, we now have a program called Step Pay, created to give our employees a way to earn more money by becoming proficient on various pieces of application equipment.

We’ve also initiated a Flexible Scheduling Program, during the winter. This gives employees the options of working five eight-hour days or four 10-hour days. Another benefit we’re offering employees is the ability to take a Scheduled Day Off during the busy seasons to take a breather, run errands or spend time with their families. We’ve also increased the bonuses we pay employees for each additional five years they spend working for NuWay-K&H Cooperative, and we survey our employees every year to ask what we can do to make their work experience better. We’ve listened to their suggestions and responded to many of their suggestions, like increasing their PTO and clothing allowance.

Why do we do this? For one thing, we want to retain the highly capable NuWay-K&H Cooperative employees serving you. For another, we want to be an attractive place for potential employees to consider working. With the current labor shortage, we’re thinking outside the box to create our own family-centered work environment. No one else, to our knowledge, is doing this. The above benefit package would have been unheard of a short time ago; but today people don’t want to work seven days a week. They want to spend time with their families and have time to themselves. The response of our employees to the above changes has been very positive.

To learn more about our family focused career opportunities and our benefits, visit our careers page!