MANUEL SOARES

Much of the workforce in production agriculture consists of low-skilled immigrant laborers, making it particularly difficult to ensure the efficiency and safety of this workforce. This is especially true in the dairy business. Given their frequent struggles with language barriers, low literacy, and email access issues, these workers are not well-suited for standard training approaches. Also, these challenges are exacerbated by high employee turnover, a lack of experienced labor, and the inherent risks associated with agricultural employment. Milc Group believes that people are key to successful farming and is committed to helping companies protect, engage, and develop their workforce. This conviction led to the development of a comprehensive and easily accessible training program.

Milc Group’s innovative platform called Train Trac makes training accessible to all staff members and helps ensure that training is delivered in a timely manner, recorded, and tracked. As a result, a very user-friendly, multilingual learning platform has been created that even personnel with little technical expertise and reading comprehension may use to access and complete training in their native language and at their own pace. Workers can use any web-enabled device, even a smartphone, to access and review the training materials on demand and as frequently as needed.

Most of their present clientele is from the dairy industry, and they face several significant obstacles. Their employees are at elevated risk for work-related injuries and fatalities due to common agricultural hazards. In livestock agriculture it is especially important to learn proper handling techniques to ensure the safety and well-being of the animals as well as the personnel. Language difficulties frequently necessitate the use of interpreters. They struggle with staff attrition and the shortage of qualified labor. Protocol drift is another problem they face, which can be detrimental to on-going safety and efficiency. Maintaining up-to-date training records is a major challenge and is important to ensure employees do not “fall through the cracks” and adherence to quality assurance programs and OSHA requirements.

Train Trac is one of the few bilingual training programs created to accommodate lower-skilled immigrant workers’ accessibility requirements.Currently available in both English and Spanish, the software will eventually support additional languages and was designed to reduce training administration tasks. Train Trac allocates training based on job roles, making it incredibly quick and simple to onboard new hires and prepare them for success. Train Trac offers a quiz builder with the ability to upload audio aids and images to measure training comprehension. All training content is stored in a central repository for posting training materials in both English and Spanish. A training frequency feature makes it easy to schedule ongoing training and helps prevent protocol deviations. Each employee’s training progress is continuously monitored, which automates the recordkeeping procedure.

Now, let us briefly introduce you to their backstory. One of Milc Group’s clients is a sizable dairy farmer with over 5000 cows and young stock, and they employ roughly 65 full-time workers, the majority of whom are from Mexico and South America and speak little to no English. This customer places the highest priority on animal care and safety. He was searching for a more effective way to regularly complete employee training. Like many farms, he was dealing with a high employee turnover rate and was finding it harder and harder to recruit new hires with experience in handling and caring for cattle.

He had tried an outsource service to assist with group safety training, but found it was hard to plan, ineffective, and occasionally new hires would get lost in the system. Scheduling training, particularly group training in multiple languages, is highly challenging because large dairy farms operate around the clock. Keeping thorough training records and organizing them to support scheduling, OSHA compliance, and other quality assurance program requirements took a lot of time and effort and was frequently not completed correctly or at all.

After implementing Train Trac for more than four years, they have observed a notable decline in mishaps and lost-time injuries, as well as improved health and care of the cows and calves. They feel that Train Trac has contributed to strengthening the company-wide culture of safety and appropriate handling and caring for the animals. Even though there is still a problem with staff turnover, they have been able to greatly improve the onboarding process by using Train Trac, and new hires are now better equipped to handle and take care of the cattle as well as be safe on the job. As far as recordkeeping and training delivery go, the manager said, “I’d be lost without Train Trac.” According to him, Train Trac offers a quick and simple method for completing and documenting training.

Milc Group sees the value of introducing Train Trac to other business sectors both inside and outside of agriculture. As they grow globally, the company intends to provide other languages, including German, Portuguese, and French. Milc Group is currently developing a comprehensive HRM system called People that will work with Train Trac.

Milc Group recognizes that clear communication is critical in any business, so Train Trac also includes a searchable document database for sharing safety data sheets, employee posting information, company policies, procedures, and emergency contact details with all employees, as well as a tool for reporting workplace incidents.

Train Trac operates on a subscription service (SAAS) basis. Support, training, and set-up help are all included in the membership at no extra charge. Virtual meetings, phone calls, emails, and texts are used to deliver training and assistance. Customers can upload and create an infinite number of training materials and quizzes. Although Milc Group does not market training content, Train Trac includes a free library of bilingual training videos, on health and safety subjects with a focus on job skills for the agriculture industry.

Milc Group’s innovation is a vital resource for the contemporary agriculture sector to prepare employees to be safe and successful on the job and promote a culture of clear communication and efficient process improvement. Milc Group is anticipated to have a greater influence and further redefine workforce training and development as it grows and adapts Train Trac for usage in more sectors and around the world.