Agribusiness

Finding qualified talent isn’t a new conundrum for agribusinesses, but these problems are intensifying. Up to 50% of the agricultural workforce may be eligible for retirement soon, and with the accelerated changes in the sector, leadership profile needs will change as well. There’s plenty of opportunity for young, talented candidates in agribusiness, but it’s a challenge for the agri-food sector to attract skilled professionals, women, and diverse candidates.

With talented agribusiness consultants located around the globe, paired with our unmatched insight into the agri-food industry, we're ready to help you identify and develop a skilled, diverse workforce that is prepared to handle the challenges of the future. We work with organizations to assess the skills in their current workforce, identify gaps that need to be filled, and recognize hidden high-potential candidates primed to develop into future leaders.

Investors continue pumping funds into agtech companies, which is accelerating the pace of digitization in the industry. Automation and connectivity are defining new norms for research, testing, supply chains, plant operations, food and worker safety, transportation, marketing and sales. Already, advanced analytics and the Internet of Things are providing insights that lead to higher crop productivity, less waste, better resource conservation and tighter cost control, enabling advances such as smart agriculture and precision farming. All of this data and technology is valuable, but only if you have the right people who understand it.

You need leaders equipped with the skills required to keep up with technological changes and manage diverse groups through disruption. We help your agribusinesses find qualified talent with STEM backgrounds to address the industry’s growing need for technical skills. Our agribusiness consultants also help organizations identify leaders with the capabilities to address challenges, lead change and deliver results.

Given the challenges of recruiting new talent in the agribusiness sector, employee engagement and retention are imperative. Organizations need strategies that help them continuously put their employees first, improving the employee experience throughout the employment lifecycle. Agribusinesses that invest in their employee experience see higher engagement, retention, and overall performance compared to those that don’t.

Our agribusiness consultants work with you to build a comprehensive employee experience program. First, we survey your employees to determine their needs and assess how well your organization is meeting them. We help you spot areas of opportunity to improve as well as build feedback loops. By listening to your employees and creating new opportunities for enablement, engagement and motivation, you’ll boost your employees’ performance and help them find greater fulfillment in their work.

We help companies create a positive, engaging and inclusive environment for all agribusiness sector employees. We examine your hiring, development, compensation and promotion practices to ensure that opportunities are equally available to everyone. We use our proprietary assessments and other research-validated tools to help you identify and develop high-potential talent. And we work with you to construct clearly defined career tracks that give up-and-coming agribusiness sector talent the experience that positions them for leadership roles. In short, we help you build a transformational, inclusive talent strategy that will accelerate performance.

Let us be part of your success story. Contact us to discover how we can help you plant the seeds for a stronger future.

Agribusiness faces a wide variety of ESG and Sustainability issues, including: environmental resource consumption, workplace conditions, incident risk management, product design, lifecycle management and many more.  To address these issues with long-term value in mind, an integrated sustainability strategy with the right people and culture is imperative.

At Korn Ferry, we’re helping our clients realize their ambitions by taking a people-focused approach to ESG and sustainability. Drawing on data, insights and expertise across the full breadth of our people solutions, we’re working with agribusiness leaders to curate and achieve their sustainability goals. We reinforce sustainability goals through executive compensation and build ESG and sustainability board capabilities and governance mechanisms. We provide sustainability talent solutions by finding and developing leaders who can drive sustainability strategy by finding, assessing and developing talent to deliver ESG and Sustainability commitments at scale, as well as championing inclusive talent management. And we embed ESG and sustainability commitments into the operating model and organization structure in order to create a sustainable culture.

We have an unmatched set of integrated, fit-for-purpose capabilities to help your organization embed its commitment to ESG and sustainability into all aspects of how you do business. We leverage diversity, equity and inclusion to magnify the business outcomes of ESG; what we refer to as inclusive sustainability. We work with you to adapt your people and governance processes, culture and operating models, so you are able to fully realize short and long-term business ambitions. Click here to explore how we can help you achieve your ESG & sustainability goals.