What factors attract and motivate dairy farm employees in their daily work?

Abstract

This study examined attraction and motivation factors important for people choosing to work and remain in the profession of dairy farm worker. The study comprised 194 agricultural students, 197 employed dairy farm workers and 147 employers. The study was based on questionnaires in which the key questions were: What would attract you to choose dairy farming as a profession? What attracts and motivates you in your daily work? What would motivate you to remain employed in dairy farming? Furthermore, in order to elucidate the farm employer’s view, they were asked what they believed were important factors to attract and motivate young people to the profession. In general, the students, employees and employers had similar opinions on factors that attract and motivate dairy farm workers in their daily work. Although the order of priorities was different, they agreed that having fun at work, good leadership, feeling pride in their work, job security, good team spirit, living in the countryside, meaningful and interesting work, safe and healthy workplace, flexible work tasks, the farm having a good reputation and feedback from supervisors were among the most important attraction and motivation factors.

Keywords

Motivation, attraction, attitudes, farm workers, agriculture, questionnaire

Published in

Work
2012, volume: 41, number: S1, pages: 5311-5316

SLU Authors

• Lunner Kolstrup, Christina

  • Department of People and Society, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

Global goals (SDG)

SDG8 Decent work and economic growth

UKÄ Subject classification

Agricultural Occupational Health and Safety

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.3233/WOR-2012-0049-5311

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/42149