Given the environmental sensitivity and short shelf-life of perishables, talent is a critical need in fresh produce warehouses.
Leadership must properly orchestrate the timely flow of fruits and vegetables through the facility to support customer demand, while keeping operating costs in check.
Warehouse’s support staff must ensure quality through proper product rotation and facility sanitation. Hourly associates must be productive, accurate, and capable of working with warehouse technology.
The problem for produce companies is that frontline warehouse roles are difficult to fill as an ample supply of well-trained and motivated personnel is not readily available. This challenge is not new, and it has persisted throughout the pandemic as unemployment rates stayed stubbornly high.
Widespread perceptions of physically demanding and repetitive work, night and weekend shifts, and limited wage growth are key hiring and retention obstacles.
Unfortunately, there is no end in sight to the talent shortages and the consequences are high. Short-staffed facilities cannot keep up with demand, yet overtime is costly and can lead to quality issues and safety problems.
Further, turnover leads to a loss of expertise.
One warehousing director shared an unintended consequence of the dire situation: “Just finding people—from the loading dock to supervisors to general managers—is getting incredibly challenging. Availability versus how fast we need them is not lining up. We’re having to put people into bigger roles before they have time to mature and understand the business.”
What can companies do to buck the trend and build a consistent workforce? To stem the loss of productive warehouse associates to competitors and jobs in other industries, produce companies are adopting a multipronged strategy.
The traditional tactic for attracting warehouse associates—enhanced benefits and higher wages—have been deployed by many companies out of necessity. These pay-related retention efforts are table stakes to remain competitive, particularly in large markets with robust industrial sectors.
A complementary strategy is to bolster facility culture. Efforts are underway to improve working conditions, safety, and atmosphere inside the facilities. Better communication methods and team building efforts are in the works.
A supply chain executive suggests: “We quickly doubled down on culture as a way to get folks to stay with us versus walking down the street for an extra buck an hour.”
Additionally, companies are trying to quell the common complaints about warehouse work. Assistive technologies are being deployed to reduce the physical burden of order fulfillment.
Flexible work schedules are being offered to accommodate associate preferences. “We try to win on schedules,” a distribution executive shared. “The more input we can get in defining schedules from team members on what works for them, the better.”
These strategies are not particularly inexpensive or easy to implement. However, the alternative of doing nothing is a recipe for chronic staffing shortages and high turnover.
Action must be taken by produce companies to promote loyalty. Doing so will help them achieve full-time warehouse associate retention and encourage seasonal workers to return in the future.
Summary
Warehousing is an essential supply chain process that facilitates the steady flow of fresh produce to the marketplace.
A reasonable amount of inventory located in regional and local facilities balances seasonal supply with demand, provides a measure of protection against demand spikes, and reduces the impact of supply chain disruptions.
Hence, warehouses must be viewed as strategic facilities that contribute to the success of a supply chain.
Attaining the greatest value from these key operations requires a revised focus. Produce executives must ensure that warehousing capabilities align with company strategies through concrete actions.
Here are three: investing in facility expansion and relocation as demand dictates; upgrading computer systems and adding task automation capabilities to keep pace with customer service requirements; and devoting resources to talent initiatives that cultivate a robust, loyal workforce.
These moves will transform warehouse capabilities and help organizations create distribution capabilities that are both nimble and efficient.
For a copy of the Warehousing 2030: Navigating a Disruptive Decade report, send requests to brian.gibson@auburn.edu.
This is an excerpt from the Supply Chain Solutions Department in the November/December 2021 issue of Produce Blueprints Magazine. Click here to read the whole issue.
