Abstract Clear and effective communication to employees is vital on-farm. Communication is most effective when using preferred modes. The objective of this study was to evaluate the communication modes swine employees receive compare these with their preferred communication modes. A total of 214 swine industry employees working directly with pigs completed an online survey in English targeting information transfer. A random sample of 62 full-time employees was selected, then analyzed. Two questions of interest included: (1) How do you currently receive information, updates, training, and other resources to do your job?; and (2) How would you like to receive information from the upper management on updates, training, resources, etc.?. Employees were able to select multiple responses that included E-mail, face-to-face, phone call, newsletter, flyer/poster/brochure (FPB), text message, and other. Binary (yes/no) responses were summarized using frequency tables in SAS 9.4. Respondent demographics included 43 males and 19 females, age varied between 21 to over 61 years, 2 to 50 years of swine industry experience. 2x2 frequency tables were utilized to show degree of agreement between employees’ preferred and current communication modes. Most employees both preferred and received communication through E-mail, and face-to-face interactions (n = 39) followed by phone calls (n = 16) followed by newsletters (n = 6), FPB (n = 5), other (n = 3), and text messages(n = 4). Modes including newsletters (n = 41), other (n = 50), text messages (n = 47), FPB (40), and phone calls (n = 33) were not wanted and not received. Areas of improvement are evident in the smaller response categories where employees preferred but did not receive or did not prefer and received. Modes that employees did not prefer, but receive include E-mail (n = 11), phone calls (n = 11), newsletters, (n = 10), FPB (n = 10) followed by other, text message, and face to face (n = 7, 7, 6 respectively). Alternatively, modes that employees preferred but did not receive include face-to-face (n = 11) and FPB (n = 7) followed by text messages, newsletters, E-mail, phone call, and other (n = 5, 5, 4, 2, 1 respectively).
Lawrence et al. (2026) studied this question.