Resilience is still being tested in our industry. I’m frustrated in NZ that the divide of busy and not busy is opening like a great chasm. Luckily, I think that the Hort industry, overall is on the positive side. I’m not so ignorant though to be forgetting our friends and colleagues in the South hit by severe hail and weather events that they are working their way through and for many just packing up until next season for all has been lost.
In the Hawkes Bay recently I’ve been talking to pack-shed friends who are almost broken themselves. Some of the smaller sheds are daylighting as QC’s and production rolls, come evening, they can be often found driving a truck or being the forkie. It’s tough. How do you really look after yourself in these times of pressure?
Lots of talk, in particular about men’s health, but really when you need to work 18-20 hours to get the job done how can you look after yourself in the other 4 hours? One thing is for sure, you need to be surrounded by a team that supports you and be that family, colleagues, or industry partners. You need reliability and a team that has your back.
This year’s problems realistically aren’t going to be solved this year, but how can we changeup the future? That’s my big question right now. We can’t take out the difficult now but crikey do we really want a workday to be so hard. It’s easy to blame others, Jacinda and her government etc for allowing the labour shortage to be what it is but to truly address the issues has to come from within the industry and industry suppliers and partners. Whether support comes in the form of a check-in phone call from an industry colleague or a whole project to look at packhouse design and flow to reduce labour units and integrate automation your team at Jenkins solidly has your back. We are the grassroots guys and gals, we do care. We want you to succeed and we really are all in this together.
Have a good week.