Farmers ‘get creative’ with bonus incentives to keep key workers

The worker shortage across Australia is one of the big challenges facing farmers as they strive to become a $100 billion industry by 2030.

Some farmers are looking to adopt bonus payments to attract and retain key workers and to drive innovation in their business.

Oyster farmer Gary Rodely is the owner and manager of Tathra Oysters and has farmed at Nelson Lake for the past 35 years.

“We’ve employed many young local people, and we’ve had some absolute beauties, some real stars along over the years,” he said.

But he has also been struggling to find ways to hold onto them. 

“You could never really offer them something that would attract them over a big paying job in the city,” Mr Rodely said.

Although he consulted with his accountant and a financial adviser, neither could recommend a structure for bonus payments so Mr Rodely developed his own.

“I’m no economist, I’m just a simple oyster farmer, so I just crunched a few numbers while lying awake at 3 o’clock in the morning,” he said.

His model links the bonus for key staff to business turnover.

“Staff would generate a 1 per cent bonus for each milestone, so for a business that turns over a million dollars, the bonus would be paid to staff in the week when the $100,000 milestone is reached.

“When $200,000 is reached an additional $2000 is paid in that week, and so on”.

This model could see an average farm worker on $55,000 earn $110,000 annually.

“People could potentially double their wages and, if they’ve got lots of bright ideas, well, you’ve got the potential to triple your wages,” he said.

Mr Rodley said he would cap the bonuses at 10 per cent.

Not just oyster growers offering incentives

Jessica Roberts works in remuneration and salary benchmarking with Rimfire Resources and said farmers were looking to adopt different models.

“People have had to get creative with pay, bonuses, and incentives,” she said.

“We’ve seen a bit of a shift from sort of discretionary ‘finger in the air’ type bonuses to businesses implementing more structured incentive and reward schemes,” she said.

Rimfire Resources tracked and tallied job advertisements in agribusiness monthly and it showed there was still a lot of demand for workers.

“Throughout 2021 and 2022, those job ads just kept rising each month,” Ms Roberts said.

She said the number of ads was dropping now, but it was still well above pre-pandemic numbers.

Regional job vacancies have continued to climb, reaching 92,500 in October 2023 but, according to the Regional Australia Institute, this is 1.7 per cent lower than last year.

Fringe benefits worth $40k

Peter Walters, a recruitment consultant from Agricultural Appointments, said farmers were starting to win workers back from the mining industry by matching accommodation and other fringe benefits.

“You’ve got your rent paid, effectively — house, power, and internet,” he said.

Sometimes workers were even provided with a supply of meat for personal use. 

“It’s pretty attractive, that can be somewhere between $35–40,000 pre-tax for a family or an individual,” Mr Walters said.

Benefits of a bonus scheme?

There is a risk in tying wages to profit, especially in agriculture, which can be at the mercy of seasonal conditions, but Gary Rodely said improvements in oyster-growing techniques had delivered a more reliable income for farmers and workers.

“One of the biggest indications of how oyster farming has become more financially viable is that a lot of the family farms are being snapped up now by stock market companies,” he said.

Mr Rodely said the bonus scheme was driving innovation.

“We’ve got a couple of people on the bonus structure already, and it’s working fabulously,” he said.

“They’re thinking about the whole place a different way.

“And they’re not just waiting for instructions, they’re coming up with so many different ways of doing things and improvements.”