How to Make Horticulture an Enjoyable Career Choice
November 15, 2022 
Photo: Wageningen University
In the greenhouse of the future, simple and repetitive tasks will be performed by robots. But it’s not that far yet: it’s going step by step. In the coming decades, employees will work in an environment that is increasingly robotized, mechanized, and digitalized.
So how can greenhouse horticulture, which is already having trouble finding employees, ensure that enough people want to work in and around the greenhouse?
The Business Unit Greenhouse Horticulture and Flower Bulbs of Wageningen University & Research (WUR) is starting the Joyride Horticulture project, which is designed to highlight good working conditions that workers may be seeking.
Much of the work in the primary processes of a greenhouse horticulture company is carried out by migrant workers, who are also getting older. They work in an increasingly warm and humid environment. Contact with colleagues is becoming less frequent because machines have taken over part of the logistics operations. The employees are also less mobile in their work. In addition, these activities are becoming increasingly short cycled. And by applying data, employees are increasingly assessed on personal performance, which also means that there is less room for mutual contacts.
Despite working in greenhouse horticulture becoming less attractive for migrant workers, greenhouse horticulture needs them. That is why WUR is starting the Joyride Horticulture PPP project. In the project, six “personas” in horticulture have been developed into concrete solutions and products.
- In “The Cool Worker,” WUR is looking for ways to make working in the greenhouse less hot, for example through adapted clothing, active ventilation, and local cooling and shade.
- In “The Ambient Worker” it is all about using digital techniques to support the employee in his or her work, for example through video instructions and direct feedback of the task quality performance from intelligent systems and machines.
- “The Social Worker” is about contact with colleagues and coaching management: how can an employee, for example, still keep in touch with colleagues during work via an image and headphones?
- “The Team Worker” is about the cohesion within a team in the workplace. How can they feel more involved with each other, for example by running their department as a mini-company and monitoring performance as a team?
- “The Safe Worker” is about physical health and safety: this includes, for example, fitness and injury-free work.
- Finally, “The Cobot Worker” is about the future of work: what will workplaces, task planning, and internal transport look like in the future if part of the work is done by robots?
Joyride Horticulture is carrying out a number of socio-technical experiments, and the different paths will be explored together with, among others, greenhouse horticultural entrepreneurs and their employees (who are addressed in their own language). The aim is to ensure that horticulture remains an attractive employer through, among other things, greater appreciation for employees.
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