Just because fruit isn’t being picked, it doesn’t mean growers sit still! There’s plenty of important off-season tasks to be done; infrastructure maintenance, pest and disease control, and weed management, to name a few.

We tend to think of harvest by number of bins, kilos, or pallets but how do growers manage off-season work that is also by piece, like winter pruning, or vine or tree training for example?

Off-season tasks often require fewer workers than harvest, but they’re usually needed over several months, and winter work often requires skill and precision. This can be an overlooked opportunity to better monitor and manage workers with a resultant reduction in labour cost.

Growers increasingly use digital tools or apps to track who worked on which rows or blocks, measure how much area each person covered and record quality checks. In ABCgrower any worker activity can be captured by time or by piece. For example, recording the number of trees a worker has pruned. A supervisor has real-time visibility to quantity done per hour for each of their crew members or earned hourly rate when paying piece rate. Crews can be better managed, as it happens. ABCgrower allows information captured by piece to be paid by piece or converted to hourly wages.

While work rates are highly important it can’t come at the cost of quality; it’s a constant balancing act between quality and labour cost. ABCgrower comes inclusive of a module that allows organisations to assign workers to rows (or bays or areas). This has the advantages of capturing work done by piece (tree, vine, plant, etc.) with the additional benefit of having visibility to who did what, where and when. For example, a QC can inspect work done and know which workers did what in case of remedial action required, or potentially for bonus payments to be made.

The Quality module in ABCgrower is highly flexible, allowing organisations to do quality assessments on winter work to measure and help manage the quality of work done, and identify tree or plant issues.

Winter work presents other challenges, not least of which is weather dependency. ABCgrower is designed to capture what is happening, when it happens, without the extra admin of having to edit pre-entered information as schedules shuffle constantly.

Off-season work is crucial but requires skilled labor, careful supervision, and a balance between quality and quantity within the bounds of compliance. It’s quieter than harvest, but definitely not “quiet” and digital tools can be used to enhance efficiency year-round.

The introduction of a minimum wage floor for horticultural workers in Australia in 2022 saw a seismic shift away from paying piece rate toward hourly wages. It wasn’t unusual to hear cries of “piece rate is dead” or even “piece rate is illegal”. With labour costs continuing to rise, we examine what’s happening a few years on.

Growers are typically using one (or more!) of three pay methods: piece rate, hourly wages, or hourly wages plus bonuses. Below, we outline the advantages and challenges of each method.

The ‘C14 decision’ was “to vary provisions in 47 modern awards which contain a rate of pay at the ‘C14’ rate, or below the ‘C13’ rate, to ensure they apply on a transitional basis only” (Changes to entry-level classifications in modern awards | Fair Work Commission). Issued on 19th November 2024, it came into effect on 1st April 2025

Labour is the single largest input cost in horticulture, making it an obvious target for cost savings in an industry where profit margins are continually under pressure. However, most in the field will tell you that achieving these savings is far from straightforward.

While there has been some relief from freight and chemical costs that blew out during covid, the cost of labour continues to rise.  It’s a worldwide issue, with the recent Irish Teagasc Horticulture Crop Input Prices report stating “labour cost is the key driver of inflation and outweighs reductions in other input categories including energy”.  For some in New Zealand, the cost as a percentage of business costs has doubled in recent years (ref. Submission on Minimum Wage Review 2022 – Horticulture New Zealand).

The NZ report concludes “increasing productivity is the only sustainable means of absorbing extra costs but increasing wages does not of itself increase worker productivity, i.e. the rate at which food crops are picked and processed”.

There are many factors to consider when choosing a software solution, and while you might have a specific problem to solve, or want to increase efficiency in your business, you may not have thought about how software is delivered, and which option is the best fit.

In-house software solutions are developed and maintained from within your organisation by your own employees, or by a contracted software company. An on-premise solution is bought from a software company and installed on your premises. It is maintained in-house, or in conjunction with the provider and/or a third-party IT company. A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution is on-cloud software, where the software provider hosts the software and makes it available to you over the internet.

In part 1, I talked about workers under the Horticulture Award who are paid hourly. Here, I’ll turn the attention to piece rates. This is where the worker is paid for each piece they worked on e.g. number of crates picked, or trees pruned. We often ask growers and packers if they pay piece rate and are met with “no, it’s illegal”. Since the minimum wage floor was introduced in 2022, if you don’t record time and task adequately then you can’t pay piece rates and remain within the rules, but it’s definitely still doable. That said, you’d be game to try without good software tools to help. Read on for the award interpretation for pieceworkers.

As providers of award interpretation software, we’re often asked questions about pay calculations – and these questions often come from organisations already doing the right thing…or at least trying to do the right thing – it’s complicated! Employees of growers and packers fall under the Horticulture Award. Here, I’ll talk about work that is paid hourly.

Changes to the Recognised Seasonal Employers (RSE) Scheme have been welcomed by New Zealand growers ahead of the upcoming season. The RSE scheme allows the horticulture and viticulture industries to recruit seasonal workers from overseas when there are not enough local workers. Similarly, the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme in Australia allows eligible businesses to recruit from the Pacific islands and Timor-Leste.

Changes to the RSE scheme include averaging out the 30-hour minimum weekly work requirement over four weeks. The PALM scheme in Australia has had the same requirement since the beginning of the year. It was due to be changed to 30 hours per week from 1 July 2024. However, the averaging component has been extended for a year. This came on the back of strong opposition from the horticulture sector who require the flexibility to adapt to weather and market conditions.

If you’re considering software for your business, you might be wondering how secure your data will be. If you’re moving away from pen and paper you will have considered the increased accuracy and efficiencies software provides. And permanence too – no lost records, no physical storage and quick access to any of your records. But is it safe?

The majority of ABC Software’s products operate online and data is stored in the cloud. We often hear of the cloud, but what actually is it? The cloud is a term used to describe a remote system that can store and process data. Its storage space and processing power make it more efficient than traditional on-premise hard drive storage. It also offers greater security.

Cloud servers are located in data centres world-wide. For example, ABCgrower data is stored in the Azure Australia geography. Database backups are replicated across other regions. Off-site storage, regular backups and 24/7 suspicious activity monitoring offers greater protection against cyberattacks than other options. Cloud storage means you can access your information on any device with an internet connection and can recover your information if your physical device is lost or damaged.

As with any system, data breaches are possible and in the event of a cloud attack you are relying on how your service provider handles it. The recent fault with an update issued by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike is an example of an infrequent, though significant event. Microsoft estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices. While this is less than one percent of all Windows devices it included the devices of many organisations that run critical services.

It is vital your software  provider has an Incident Response Policy in case of a security breach, and a Business Continuity Plan in case of a disaster. ABC Software’s Business Continuity Plan was well tested in February 2023 when Cyclone Gabrielle hit Hawke’ Bay, causing flooding of the ABC Software offices and left the city without communications for three days and power for seven. The company was able to continue running throughout, without impact to its services and without any data loss or exposure.

There are many and varied steps software companies take to protect their clients data from threats and vulnerabilities. For example, ABC Software’s Inhouse Security Policy includes Role-Based Access Control to restrict users access to information, Zero Trust security which requires users to be authenticated, authorised, and continuously validated before being granted access to data, and Multi-Factor Authentication for accessing sensitive systems.

Ultimately, any system has vulnerabilities to data loss and business interruption, from a paper timesheet in a downpour, loss of internet connectivity in a storm, to a malicious cyberattack. On balance, if you chose a reputable software provider with a multi-faceted security policy, you can rest assured your information is well protected.