In a logistics business, the employees have the largest expense of around 60-70% of the total budget. That’s why managing and reducing workforce expenses is a top priority of every logistics company. At BLK & GLD Logistics, our employee retention level is 80%, compared to the other businesses in the industry. Here are some of the workforce management strategies that work best for us and may work for your business too.

1.Invest time in hiring the right employees.

According to the logistics experts in the industry, this is the best way to increase turnover and productivity. But most of the companies don’t understand the logic behind this and rush the hiring process. It’s suggested to invest time while hiring your company’s employees – no matter for which position it is. You can’t change your employee’s attitude and make them motivated for work. On the contrary, you can teach them the skills needed for a certain job. If you hire a motivated and well-mannered employee, he will struggle to manage his responsibilities efficiently.
Despite all this, businesses still hire employees that are more experienced in the specific field over the ones who are motivated but have less experience. But this is not right at all. If you are someone running a logistics company, don’t do this. Make personality testing your top priority while hiring the employees. Conduct multiple interviews to identify candidates with the motivation and passion for a specified job.

2.Choose your DC Managers and Supervisors with extra vigilance.

According to various surveys, distribution center managers and supervisors are the most important people behind your company’s productivity and employees retention. These intermediary managers are the face of your company – both to your workforce and in the industry. It’s very significant for the managers and supervisors to not only manage the operations efficiently but to build strong relationships with the workforce. If the employees are not treated respectfully and fairly, they are more likely to quit the job. Long story short, if your Dc managers and supervisors have a rare combination of good interpersonal skills and operational acumen, provide them with an incentive to stay. Because if they will stay, you’ll experience more productivity across your workforce.

3.Workforce retention should be your top priority.

According to different research carried out on logistics workforce management, finding, and keeping qualified employees is the toughest challenge. It’s hard to retain your warehouse workers, but if you follow the right strategies then you can push your retention rates above the average. When an employee quits the job and you hire a new one instead, it costs you more than $7000 on the recruitment, training, and other stuff. Also, new employees take months for training which affects the company’s productivity. If your productivity rate is around 50%, then it’s recommended that you double your labor costs for the same output to retain your employees. Some of the best Strategies to improve workforce retention are:

Provide your employees with a competitive salary including the other benefits. Dissatisfaction is one of the main reasons why employees quit their jobs.
Show your employees a clear path to future success. If they will see your organization to be beneficial for their future, they will stay.
Recognize the achievements of your employees and reward them for it as it will keep them motivated.
When an employee decides to quit, make an effort to stop them. Sometimes, all those employees want is someone to stop them from leaving.

4.Hire the new employees from within.

There is quite a visible talent gap in the logistics industry. When a key position needs to be filled, companies start looking for new talent. There is a common assumption that bringing an outsider into the company will accelerate productivity. But success is more likely when the company invests in someone from within. Logistics companies have the programs to support and grow their “high potential” employees. So, if someone is working as a warehouse worker and is motivated, he is likely to become a manager in the future. Behind every success, hard work is the key.
Logistics companies without such programs are in danger of losing their workforce as the employees don’t see an opportunity for growth. Instead, companies that hire internal talent for key roles and provide them with growth opportunities are less likely to experience workforce retention.

5.Use technology to manage your workforce.

Before this point, we have talked about hiring and training employees for your company. But in all this, the most important thing to consider is “technology”. It plays a major role in the company’s success. To be more specific, you need innovative tools that can help you manage your workforce and enable you to maximize productivity with the least number of people.
Labor management systems are specifically designed for measuring workforce performance against specific productivity goals. According to the research, only 20% of the logistics companies are using LMS. And almost 96% among them are satisfied with the results of workforce management, while only 4% are unsatisfied. Some of the most common benefits of LMS systems include:

There is a visible reduction the labor costs.
The daily progress can be monitored against the specified production plan.

6.Focus on building strategic relationships with temporary staffing agencies.

The use of temporary staff for your warehouse is highly strategic. By doing this, you can economically manage the fluctuating order volumes. If you will keep your full-time staff to a minimum and hire temporary workers when needed, then you don’t have to pay extra when there are no ongoing orders. Unfortunately, companies do consider temporary agencies as strategic partners. Also, this approach can rebound when you need a volume of the quality workforce to handle the sudden surge.

7.Well, train your logistics workforce.

Every logistics operation has a training program. But the real concern is how effective is the training program and how much it helps the newbies to maximize productivity in the shortest amount of time. Poorly trained employees can be bad for your company in various ways:

• When they need weeks and months to achieve the specified goals, then you will need to hire more employees to meet the needs.
• Untrained employees work with lots of errors which doubles the delivery time and cost – leading to dissatisfied customers
• Sometimes companies accelerate the training process to work on the pending work. But this is not the right thing to do. When training is accelerated, the employees are unable to learn well. So, it’s better to train the employees well to avoid any consequences in the future.