On the company side, farm owners, human resource directors, vice presidents of production, and office managers can all access Ganaz by opening up a web browser on their computer or phone and sending a message to all their employees with a single click. The platform works similarly to Gmail and Outlook, where users can compose a message, select the recipients and deliver the message to an unlimited number of employees at once. The message will be delivered as a text message, in the employee’s preferred language, to their phone. Farm owners can then view and respond to any replies from employees through the web platform. Additionally, Ganaz allows farmers to: • Send a translated message to all of last year’s workers with details on the upcoming season to be sure they return to your farm. • Send schedule changes, locations and training videos. • Send reminders, announcements, productivity reports and recognition for a job well done. • Hear questions and feedback from your workforce and respond quickly. Adding features to increase retention, simplify onboarding Closing a $2.3 million round of funding this past November, Ganaz has been able to hire more staff to beef up the platform. The startup recently rolled out a new retention tool that focuses on helping growers understand why people are leaving, and gives them the information needed to intervene before they lose their best workers. The tool allows farmers to build surveys, pulling from a library of questions tailored to employment in agriculture. These include questions surrounding wages, benefits, quality of field operations, working conditions, leadership evaluation, and more. The surveys can be scheduled in advance and employees can respond via text, anonymously. “Our new feature allows growers to benchmark themselves against others in the industry,” said Freeman. “For the most part, growers have an idea of why people leave, but they aren’t necessarily getting the whole story. The tools gives workers an anonymous way to clue growers into the fact that competing farmers upped their rates or that their foreman is mistreating their crew. It provides them accurate data, quickly, so that they can keep the people
they worked so hard to recruit.” Additionally, Ganaz is currently working on building an onboarding tool to help automate the new hire and training process. The tool digitalizes the manual data entry required when hiring new employees. By eliminating the paperwork, growers can hire the 100 to 500 new employees per week needed during peak harvest without worrying about the cumbersome administrative process behind it. The start-up company strives to be a value-add for the agricultural industry and is continually building new features and functions, based on input from growers. Since joining Western Growers Center for Innovation & Technology in February 2018, Ganaz has participated in numerous exclusive events where staff has interacted with growers to receive face-to-face feedback about their product and pitched their technology to venture capitalists for funding. “The benefits of being part of the Center and attending its events has been amazing,” Freeman said. “Everyone at Ganaz is a produce nerd, and we just love working in and for this industry. It’s really fun to serve agriculture—farmers, farmworkers—and create something for them that not only makes them happy but knocks their socks off.”
Ganaz, along with GroGuru, won the Automation Challenge hosted byWG and Radicle Growth
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JULY | AUGUST 2019
Western Grower & Shipper | www.wga.com
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