Relationships between selected human resource management practices and dairy farm performance

The objectives were to identify relationships between human resource management (HRM) practices used by dairy farm businesses and the productivity and profitability of the dairies. Explanatory variables were the following practices: training, job descriptions, standard operating procedures, milk quality incentives, and the employment of Spanish-speaking employees. The dependent variables were return on assets, return on equity, rolling herd average, and somatic cell count. The effects of individual HRM practices were analyzed to test for means separation between groups that "used" and those that "did not use" HRM practices. The results did not support expectations that differences exist between the groups. However, a significant positive relationship was found between return on equity and the use of continued training (used = 10.61%; did not use = -62.38%), and a significant negative relationship was found between the use of standard operating procedures for feeding and somatic cell count (used = 263,000; did not use = 214,000). Profitability and productivity did not seem to be major factors in producers' decisions to use or not use HRM practices.