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While nearly every warehouse operator today complains about the critical shortage of good people, the steps in the process of developing talent are not always understood.
Step one is recruitment. Is your warehousing organization a truly attractive place to work? In a competitive marketplace, how do you compare with others who are recruiting in the same market?
Who is doing the recruiting job? If it is a traditional human resources manager, that person may have more ability as a gatekeeper than a recruiter. To attract the best talent, you need to convince people that your company is a better place to work than the other firms that are hiring. Not every company in the logistics service industry is an attractive place to work. Your recruiter should be selling against those who do not have a good reputation.
Step two is called “on-boarding.” What happens on the first day with a new employee who joins your team? Who takes care of the process of orienting that new person? How is training handled? Is someone appointed to be the new person’s coach? If management does not control the on boarding process, someone else will. Consider your own experience at the first day on a new job. Did it leave `you with a positive feeling towards your new company? If not, what did they do wrong, and what could you do better?
Step three, retention, depends on engagement. In any workplace, there are some people who are truly involved and enthusiastic about the work they are doing, and there are some who are disengaged. These are the people who show up, but they don’t truly care about what they are doing. Engagement can be tested, but the best measure of engagement, or lack of it, is turnover. Those people who don’t care are likely to join another company that seems more attractive.
When people leave your warehousing organization, do you find out why they left? Engagement can be improved, but many companies don’t even recognize that they have a problem. Many companies are not measuring their ability to retain people, and therefore they have no specific handle on how well they’ve done with engagement.
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