Taking positive actions to help applicators reduce their stress levels can lead to a more satisfied and productive workforce.

Stress, Fatigue, and the Custom Applicator

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Pesticide Applicators Are Often Stressed

Stress is a fact of life for people in many occupations, including those who apply pesticides and fertilizers in agriculture. Some pressure on the job can keep you on your toes, but too much stress can damage your health. Prolonged stress can increase your chances of developing heart disease, high blood pressure, and digestive problems like ulcers. Stress also affects your immune system, leaving you more vulnerable to colds, the flu, and other infections.

Little research has been done to document the cost of stressed-out, tired workers in the custom application business. We do know that workers in other high-stress occupations have higher rates of turnover and absenteeism, and more accidents and injuries. During the past several years, we have been interviewing custom applicators about how they view stress. Our research indicates that stress and fatigue have the potential to lead to serious problems, such as misapplications, spills, and other costly mistakes.

What Causes Stress Among Applicators?

In interviewing and surveying more than 2,000 applicators, managers, and agronomists, here’s what they said causes stress:

• low pay for a complex and demanding job
  
  
• customers with unrealistic expectations
  
  
• lack of time for family, friends, and self
  
  
• concerns about the long-term health effects of pesticide exposure
• lack of sleep
  
  
• concerns about spray drift and the potential consequences of an application error
  
  
• lack of communication with co-workers, managers, or family members
  
  
• increasing complexity of equipment and products
  
  

Our interviews also revealed several successful tactics adopted by companies to manage their employees’ stress and reduce the effects of fatigue. From research in the field of stress management, we know that these hands-on tactics work!

Whose Job Is It to Deal With Stress?

Some of these techniques for managing stress and the effects of fatigue involve changes in a person’s habits or life-style. While things like exercise, a better diet, and use of humor will help a person cope with stress, these changes take a strong commitment and often require a lot of time.

Techniques that will likely have a larger and longer-lasting impact involve actual changes to the work and the workplace itself. Decision makers such as managers, company agronomists, and co-op board members can make a significant impact by being aware of the negative consequences of stress and taking specific actions such as improved scheduling, enhanced training programs, adequate time off, and other steps to create a positive work environment.

The custom application business often involves working long hours in a variety of potentially stressful conditions.

What Applicators Can Do

The recommendations that follow come directly from successful applicators. These techniques are also supported by research as being effective in other work settings as well.

1. Eat Right, Eat Often

Your body needs a constant supply of high-grade energy, just like your equipment. No applicator would dream of heading out in their rig with a tank of low-grade, lousy quality fuel. Yet, when the busy season rolls around, we fill our bodies with fast food and other high-fat, low nutrition junk. Worse yet, we sometimes don’t eat at all! It’s worth the time to wake up a few minutes earlier to eat a quick breakfast and pack a nutritious lunch. Make sure to include a couple servings of fruits and vegetables to munch on during the day. Limit your intake of fatty meats, candy bars, and sugar.

An occasional cup of coffee or a can of soda is probably okay for most people, but make sure you drink lots of water—eight glasses a day, at least—to keep you refreshed. Water intake is critically important as the weather warms. This is especially true if you are handling products that require a large array of protective gear that can cause heat stress.

2. Have Someone Else Tackle Home Chores

It’s stressful having a house and a lawn during the summer time! Home chores take a tremendous amount of time, and in many areas, there’s a limited window of time to get important household tasks done. If possible, hire a qualified high school or college student to mow the lawn, take down storm windows, paint, and do other necessary jobs. You’ll have more time to yourself on your few days off, and you won’t have that gnawing feeling of undone tasks around the house.

3. Have a Pre-Season Team Meeting with Your Family

For most applicators, the stressful season starts in mid to late spring. Some applicators report working six or seven days a week, 100 or more hours per week for several weeks in a row. This type of time commitment is hard on you, your spouse (or significant other), and kids. One solution is to talk with people in your life well in advance of the busy season. Explain the time pressures you feel and discuss ways to work together as a team. Make sure that important family events like birthdays, holidays, and kids’ sporting events get onto your calendar (and your manager’s!).

4. Get Moving

Exercise is a natural and healthy stress reliever. Physical activity provides an outlet for extra energy generated by chemical reactions within the body during stressful situations. Exercise, especially during the off-season, will prepare you for the long strenuous days of work during the spring and summer. If your doctor approves, even a few minutes of brisk walking or other aerobic exercise can have tremendous stress-relieving effects and will leave you feeling less worn out at day’s end.

5. Keep Your Sense of Humor

Simple laughter in the face of an adverse situation actually helps break the cycle of stress! Make sure you talk out stressful issues with the right people. If the problem is communications with customers or co-workers, make sure you follow the chain of command within your company. For example, if an important customer twists your arm to get a field sprayed early, explain that all of your scheduling is handled by your manager, agronomist, or whoever handles your schedule.

What Managers Can Do

The recommendations that follow come directly from successful co-op and fertilizer plant managers and other key decision makers. In visiting successful facilities, we learned that communication and teamwork were key factors to success!

1. Buy Lunch for Your Applicators

Several companies report that linking up with a local restaurant or deli to provide boxed lunches and dinners is a great stress reliever for applicators. It also saves time. For a set fee, the caterer packs a nutritious meal of a sandwich (with whole grain bread, of course), fruit, veggie sticks, milk, and maybe even a salad. The cost is either deducted from the employees’ daily pay or is subsidized by the company.

2. Train Your Workforce Well

One major cause of stress is the feeling of not having control over a situation. Well-trained applicators feel more in control. Provide adequate training in the areas of customer relations, equipment maintenance, application technology, and crop science.

Proper training should be viewed as a key financial investment that will pay dividends through increased efficiency and reduced stress. Applicator surveys indicate that nearly 40% of respondents were aware of misapplications or other errors resulting from excessive stress and fatigue. Another 45% were aware of personal injuries, spills, or other accidents. A carefully planned training strategy will help minimize the potential for these types of costly events.

3. Build Team “Spirit” Before the Season Starts

Pre-season meetings with employees are very useful. Some applicators have complained that their supervisor has little communication with them until a crisis hits. By then, it’s too late. Good communication and careful planning will make the season go much more smoothly. Employees will also be happier at the end of the year, making them more likely to stick with your company. Successful application companies are very conscious of the importance of employee retention because finding, hiring, and training new applicators is very costly.

4. Educate Customers and the General Public about Your Industry

Many farming customers are simply not aware of the complexity of the custom application business or the sophistication of the chemicals and application technology. Make sure to have producer events like open houses or displays to teach people about your business.

Marketing booths and displays set up at farm shows, fairs, and other special events always have served as a forum for finding new customers, but they can also help people better understand your business.

5. Schedule Time Off

It’s tough to give applicators much time off once the busy season hits, especially if the weather is good and the competition is fierce. But applicators say that even a couple hours off on a Saturday morning or afternoon provides a great stress relief valve. Don’t underestimate the value of even short breaks to let applicators deal with personal interruptions in their work schedule.

It also pays to find, hire, and train qualified backup applicators to give your people an occasional day off.

6. Talk, Talk, Talk Things Over

We’ve consistently heard that being an applicator (and being a manager) is a tough, tiring job. The stress can also take its toll on families. Try to recognize the stresses your applicators face and provide the resources necessary to help them deal with their stress. Be willing to listen to applicator concerns, and involve employees in solving stressful problems. Of course, the “off” season is the best time to think ahead, meet with your applicators, and create a climate of understanding, empathy, and professionalism. That’s what makes custom application businesses successful!

For More Information

Additional resources are available to help custom application businesses cope with stress and fatigue. For more information, contact Dr. John Shutske at 612-626-1250. You can also contact Theatre at Work, a company based in St. Paul, Minnesota, that develops and delivers theater-based training on workplace issues. From 1995-1998 they created the educational presentation, “Stress-Ticide: a Theatrical Presentation for Professional Custom Applicators.” Over 2,000 custom applicators have seen this highly acclaimed work, which is available to custom application businesses throughout the U.S. Versions for lawn care applicators and structural pest control technicians are also available. For more information, call 651-698-2270.

John M. Shutske
Agricultural Safety and Health Specialist
Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Produced by Communication and Educational Technology Services, University of Minnesota Extension.

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