Abstract:
Background: At their peak in July, four agricultural sectors total more than 107,000 agricultural workers in Washington, meaning that there are thousands of people who can be impacted by improved leadership. There has been increasing research on the importance of leadership in the workplace over the past three decades, with more recent research highlighting the correlation between better leadership and sustained performance at the workplace. The Washington State Tree Fruit Association, Washington State Department of Agriculture's Technical Services and Education Program, and Washington State University have developed the Agricultural Leadership Program (ALP) to provide comprehensive bilingual training for employees in the tree fruit industry.
Statement of Problem: As the first such program in Washington State, the ALP wanted to measure the behavior change of the ALP participants, but no assessment currently exists to do so. The ALP reached out to the Pacific Northwest Agricultural Safety and Health (PNASH) Center at the University of Washington to co-develop and pilot a behavior change assessment.
Methods: Bilingual (Spanish and English) scenarios were drafted that discussed a supervisor interacting with their team of workers in various settings. ALP participants answered six written survey questions about three scenarios before (April 2023) and again after (May 2023) completing six days of classroom-based training. After ALP participants completed a six-week mentorship program in their workplace, they joined focus groups (July 2023) to discuss one of the scenarios they encountered earlier as a survey.
Results: There was a 154% increase in the number of direct references to skills from Survey 1 (pre-ALP) to Survey 2 (post-ALP), with 39 direct references in Survey 1 and 99 direct references in Survey 2. There was a 13% increase in overall average leadership confidence, including a smaller range of leadership confidence self-rating for all participants. The highest increase in percent concordance among all ALP participants was for Leadership Traits (31%), Emotional Intelligence (28%), and Delegation (28%). There was a 25% increase in overall concordance between the participants and the student-researcher. All ALP participants who spoke up stated that they would recommend the ALP to others. No one stated the contrary. Many participants shared some of the things they learned from the ALP that were very important to them, including skills and topics that were shared with others and how they were applied in both personal and professional settings. Some of these focus group quotes are listed in the results section.
Discussion: The ALP is giving agricultural supervisors and managers the tools necessary to be leaders at their worksites and develop better relationships with their workers, allowing the ALP participants to feel much more confident and knowledgeable about their leadership. This pilot assessment demonstrated the behavior change of ALP participants by tracking their changes throughout the program and provided a first step toward capturing the impact of the ALP on the agricultural sector.