Tips to Protect Your Warehouse Employees and Boost Performance
Is your powered trailer mover tapped out? Warehouse workers are too. With the rapid growth of e-commerce, labor supplies are drying up.
Unsustainable
There will be an estimated 452,000 warehouse and distribution positions in need of fulfillment in 2018-19. However the industry is already labor-strapped, with the volume of positions outpacing the labor pool’s ability to fulfill demand by 180,300 positions per year since 2013. How will the industry cope with this shortage as e-commerce sales continue to accelerate?
Filling-in the Blanks
Retailers, delivery companies, and third-party logistics firms are dealing with the labor crunch in each (or all) of these three ways:
• Recruiting from Other Industries
Recruitment from other industries has proven successful in recent years, with government data showing a 66% increase in employees moving to the transportation and warehouse sector from other industries from 2011-15, though this arena won’t lend enough to meet demand.
• Automation to Boost Efficiency
Robots and autonomous vehicles can boost the productivity levels of existing employees.
• Market Expansion
Moving into new sectors with readily available workforces.
What Metros Offer Light in the Darkness?
Federal employment data points to multiple markets with the right combination of availability, quality, and cost of labor, as well as proximity to large customer populations for warehouses and distribution, including Memphis, Nashville, Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Louisville, Denver, Indianapolis, and Oakland, to name a few.
Intelligent Design
Smart analysis of labor sources is essential. To protect the bottom line, intelligent site selection efforts take into account the fact that labor contributes to more than 20% of total supply chain cost as well as 75% of final-touch distribution.
Short on manpower? Up the ante, saving time and labor with a powered trailer mover from DJ Products. Learn more today.