While essential businesses have expanded their staff to support unexpected surges in consumption, many other businesses have experienced massive reductions to their product markets and in many cases have had to reduce their operations to a bare minimum of staff or closed their businesses completely. An on-demand, flexible workforce strategy is needed in these unprecedented times.
So, which questions should you be asking surrounding your on-demand workforce?
1. What type of candidate skills do we need from our workforce in the future?
To combat economic uncertainty, supply chain and essential manufacturing are laser-focused on keeping their processes agile; to protect and buffer their profit margins in preparedness for the “future of work“ effect. The first quarter of 2021 should provide clarity on how the supply chain demands much of which will be dependent on stimulus spending and the pace of recovery as we battle the ‘2nd wave’ of the pandemic.
2. What will the duration of on-demand staff be, and how will we manage to schedule it?
Businesses face ample challenges during this pandemic and to find and qualify workers for extra shifts and temporary projects is a hassle. Access to candidates who are genuinely ‘ready, willing and able’ to work has been complicated and reduced by the need for contactless access to traditional bricks and mortar ‘agency’ activities.
In times of change, having a reliable resource for critical “just-in-time” labour with changing skills-sets can make or break your operating budget.
Since labour and wage costs represent the majority of a business’s (static) operating overhead, significant costs can be reduced and better managed with the flexibility to scale their wages in direct proportion to more finely-tuned productivity; increasing their resilience and agility to unpredictable ‘spikes’ in their business volumes.
3. How will these skills vary and how can we retain the training investment in a temporary workforce?
Until now, the supply chain industry has assessed its manual labour operations performing layer-by-layer evaluations to apply process improvements to manage wage cost-control.
The ‘future of work’ will be dependent on a powerful combination of warehouse automation and technology applications; updating capital equipment to automate product movement and order selection activities with ‘intelligent’, complex conveyor and robotic systems and radiant (sorting) sensors.
Technology capital investments made by businesses have made it even more vital to get the right staff and skills-correlation in place, pivoting to unexpected changes to business volume. Integrating ‘on-demand’ staff with the right skills will be crucial for the process improvements of the future.
Technology capital investments made by businesses have made it even more vital to get the right staff and skills-correlation in place, pivoting to unexpected changes to business volume. Integrating ‘on-demand’ staff with the right skills will be crucial for the process improvements of the future.
