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Farming the Future: The Effect of UX Research on Washington’s Workforce

Case Study

Washington State Employment Security Department

Farm worker loading picked apples into a bin
Anthro-Tech team members
Worker experience map

The Problem

Washington State’s Employment Security Department (ESD) is important to helping people find jobs and grow the economy. However, ESD’s slow and complicated ways of hiring made it hard to find workers for seasonal fruit farms, particularly through the H-2A Visa Program.

Farmers shaking hands in an apple orchard

The H-2A program helps American farmers hire temporary foreign workers, which is important when they don't have enough local workers.

Fruits like apples, berries, cherries, grapes, and pears are essential to Washington's agriculture, needing manual labor for growing and harvesting. Worker shortages or recruitment challenges affect farm productivity, food availability, and the regional economy.

To address these issues, ESD worked with Anthro-Tech on a customer experience study. The goal was to understand and improve recruitment for farmworkers, growers, and employers.

The Solution

Anthro-Tech researched agricultural recruitment for eight months, talking directly with farmworkers, growers, and employers to find solutions.

Through in-person research and focus groups, our UX researchers showed the importance of community connections in farming and identified communication challenges. Employers were concerned about having enough workers, while farmworkers struggled to get reliable jobs, indicating the need for easier ways to hire. We created, tested, and refined journey maps, using visual aids to show different perspectives and to help ESD stakeholders understand the complexities. To make these findings clear and accessible, we put them into a reference document.

Agricultural farmworker experience map

Anthro-Tech created, tested, and refined journey maps using visual aids to show different perspectives. 

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The Impact

Our evidence-based recommendations helped improve recruitment for everyone involved. They include clearer roles for ESD and its partners', more resources and support for farmworkers, better language help, and recruitment that fits the norms of workers and employers. 

These actions further connected ESD, farmworkers, growers, and employers, leading to positive changes and making recruitment in Washington more efficient. Anthro-Tech's work, based on empathy and practicality, will simplify agricultural recruitment.