Farmers may recoil at the thought of working indoors in an office environment, but it could be an important asset to streamline a good work process after major disasters, according to a leading agribusiness trainer
Director of Agrifocused Carmen Quade will be facilitating a number of workshops in conjunction with Agriculture Victoria with farmers next week focused on the importance of record keeping, cloud-based and paper-based systems and overcoming barriers to change.
Statewide agriculture recovery manager Tess McDougall said the workshops are being offered as part of a suite of programs to support farmers impacted by the 2022 floods and storms.
"The workshops are designed to help farmers develop the knowledge and skills they need to improve their farm businesses, with the aim of easing the administrative pressure on farmers at a time when they're rebuilding their businesses from the floods," she said.
Ms Quade also said administrative staff need to be organised when dealing with crisis situations.
"If there's any sort of natural disaster, there's always a need to acquire grant funding or money from the bank and all of that means being able to get your hands on documents relatively quickly, and pulling things together easily so that you have good plans moving forward," she said.
Ms Quade said there is more understanding that office work is essential in the agriculture sector, but workers sometimes find it a challenge.
"No one goes into farming because they like the office side of the work," she said.
"They go into it because they often like the production aspects of it, but there's sometimes other people dragged into the office side of things that perhaps don't have both the agricultural background and office background,"
"There are people that are either just supporting a partner or spouse through their involvement in the admin side of the business, so for them, it's perhaps could be more complicated."
Ms Quade said developing good office work skills can lead to a wide range of skills that are useful as an agribusiness grows.
"Even in large family businesses, it may still only be one person who has the responsibility for handling many responsibilities like insurance, marketing, social media, finance, and a whole range of other things, " she said.
She also said she received a lot of questions about separating work and personal relationships, especially when many office spaces are shared within the family home.
"Sometimes it's about setting boundaries about what is work and what is personal and just making sure that you continue to have professional communication in the context of your business dealings," she said.
"One thing that can help with this is maybe considering a farm office environment that is outside of the home so there is a physical separation there."
The half-day workshops will be held at Wodonga on Tuesday September 12, Tatura on Wednesday September 13 and Swan Hill on Thursday September 14.
