Pago: The Ag Labor Platform
By Stephanie Metzinger E nvision a future where digital can receive real-time visibility of crew time, production and labor costs. With Pago, that future is here. Pago is the first product to serve both farm labor contractors and growers by offering a platform where the two parties can work collaboratively to carry out crucial labor activities. These include everything from scheduling crews and calculating time rate and piece rate to monitoring crew activity in real time and simplifying payroll systems and contract negotiations through easy-to-use digital systems. “When developing Pago, we first took the perspective of it working for labor contractors and then enhanced the system to benefit growers,” said Mike Dodson, systems completely replace hand- written time sheets and where you
CEO of Pago. “Our software team partnered with farm labor contractors and growers to build the product, ensuring that that the platform met the needs of both parties.” Pago is the brainchild of the same agtech software team that built Lotpath Quality, a leading quality control system for fruits and vegetables that improves food chain visibility and ensures the highest quality products travel through the fresh supply chain. After the success of Lotpath Quality, the team wanted to take their experience and knowledge of ag and tech to build a new product that would help solve another pressing industry issue: labor. HOW PAGOWORKS For Farm Labor Contractors For farm labor contractors, the Pago team can help configure an account or
labor contractors can configure their account themselves. This includes importing employees and crews; setting up grower customer and field lists; and designing contracts to include compensation information for employees and billing details for customers. With contracts in place, the labor contractor or grower can start scheduling crews to work on particular fields on particular days. In the field, the innovative technology behind the Pago employee badge is used. Pago badges allow for easy time keeping, as each badge is linked to an employee’s profile and photo and equipped with a chip that can be scanned with the Pago Timekeeper smart phone app. Recording an employee’s time in a crew, clocking in and out and collecting production information for each employee has never been simpler.
20 Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com MAY | JUNE 2018
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