I wanted to add a little bit on unskilled labor, based on my own experiences.
At my company we have a mix of company employees and contract labor. Our contracted labor is temporary, and can work a maximum of 1 year at a time. They don't get benefits, and are paid less than the company associates. In my experience and most of my fellow supervisors, contract labor is almost more trouble than it's worth. it takes time to interview them, then more time for the background checks...and many don't even make it through that process. If they get hired and are good, either we hire them for a company position or they find something better elsewhere. If they aren't good, then we wind up firing them. Often for attendance issues. Turnover can get rather high, which means we're also spending a lot of time training them...and we can be left short-handed at particularly bad periods of time. It also seems like their less motivated than our company associates, so their work can be sloppier and slower. From a production perspective it really sucks.
The company as a whole, of course, is looking at other factors. It's easier to flex contract labor to the needs of the business, hiring more if we get busy and letting others go if we are slow. It's also cheaper, from a benefits perspective. (Supposedly. If you include all the training time and overtime when we're shorthanded, it really depends. I believe we successfully argued that a few of these positions should be converted to company employees...but we're not going to get all of them.)
I wanted to discuss one particular task that on the face of it is about as unskilled as we get. Since our distribution center ships about 12,000 lines of product a day, we go through a LOT of cardboard and plastic shrink wrap. Every time you empty a box of product, that box has to go somewhere. Every time we unwrap a pallet of product, the shrink wrap has to go somewhere. We try to recycle as much as we can, so we have a baler or two where we scrunch the cardboard or plastic down and wrap it with baling wire, then stage it for pick up. We also try to re-use some particular boxes (we call moon boxes and jewel boxes) where the flaps on the bottom fold...easy to flatten, easy to fold together again to create a box when needed. So we hire contract labor to sort the cardboard, place the re-usable boxes in densos and bale the rest.
Since workers throughout the facility are picking product (and thus breaking down boxes and discarding shrink wrap) we have collection points all over...and utility drivers that will move the material to the baling area.
Like I said, baling is about as unskilled as it gets here. But this is what happens when we're shorthanded -
The material can't get baled fast enough, the utility driver starts running out of space to place the material. The driver may try to place it down one of our aisles, but now it's in the way of equipment pickers. They can't reach pallets of product unless they move the cardboard or plastic out of the way.
If the utility driver can't find a place to put it, then they just stop taking the material from the collection points. The employees then run out of space to place the cardboard and start piling it on an overhead rack that runs all along the conveyor. Next thing you know, you're up to your ears in cardboard.
Since the baling job doesn't require any particular skill, it's actually hard to keep the best workers there. We always have better places to put them. Or, again, they feel underutilized and find some other job. But since we don't put our best there, we have to spend more time supervising the area to make sure the employees aren't sneaking off to check the cell phones (that they aren't supposed to be carrying in the first place) and making sure they're actually working. That's assuming they show up regularly in the first place.
It's particularly frustrating when you get someone who is a good fit. Who is reliable, works hard, and shows up regularly. Frustrating because you can only keep them for a year (assuming they complete that year), and once they're gone you're right back on the merry-go-round.
I run into that in my current role as well, and still have some associates upset when a particularly reliable temp completed his year we couldn't keep him. Ever since then, it's been a month or so where we're shorthanded while I interview candidates for the position, followed by a month or two where the position is filled, then losing them for one reason or another. Oh and, btw, if we're in overtime or have heavy volume and we're shorthanded I don't like to pull my full time associates away from processing to do that job. Which means half the time my shipping associate and I are doing the bulk of it, and I ask my associates to do some of the other tasks (i.e. wrapping their pallets instead of staging them by the wrapper for the temp to handle).
Some of this speaks volumes about the current labor pool in the area. I think unemployment is actually somewhat low (about 4%) so it's hard to get any response to a posting in the first place. Some of it, however, also speaks to how little incentive they have to do a good job. Or rather, their only real reward is to do well enough to get hired on full time. That and the fact that warehouse work does pay more than minimum wage.
Cardboard baler is definitely an unskilled position - yet the consequences of treating the position as easily replaceable can have a big impact on our operations.
At my company we have a mix of company employees and contract labor. Our contracted labor is temporary, and can work a maximum of 1 year at a time. They don't get benefits, and are paid less than the company associates. In my experience and most of my fellow supervisors, contract labor is almost more trouble than it's worth. it takes time to interview them, then more time for the background checks...and many don't even make it through that process. If they get hired and are good, either we hire them for a company position or they find something better elsewhere. If they aren't good, then we wind up firing them. Often for attendance issues. Turnover can get rather high, which means we're also spending a lot of time training them...and we can be left short-handed at particularly bad periods of time. It also seems like their less motivated than our company associates, so their work can be sloppier and slower. From a production perspective it really sucks.
The company as a whole, of course, is looking at other factors. It's easier to flex contract labor to the needs of the business, hiring more if we get busy and letting others go if we are slow. It's also cheaper, from a benefits perspective. (Supposedly. If you include all the training time and overtime when we're shorthanded, it really depends. I believe we successfully argued that a few of these positions should be converted to company employees...but we're not going to get all of them.)
I wanted to discuss one particular task that on the face of it is about as unskilled as we get. Since our distribution center ships about 12,000 lines of product a day, we go through a LOT of cardboard and plastic shrink wrap. Every time you empty a box of product, that box has to go somewhere. Every time we unwrap a pallet of product, the shrink wrap has to go somewhere. We try to recycle as much as we can, so we have a baler or two where we scrunch the cardboard or plastic down and wrap it with baling wire, then stage it for pick up. We also try to re-use some particular boxes (we call moon boxes and jewel boxes) where the flaps on the bottom fold...easy to flatten, easy to fold together again to create a box when needed. So we hire contract labor to sort the cardboard, place the re-usable boxes in densos and bale the rest.
Since workers throughout the facility are picking product (and thus breaking down boxes and discarding shrink wrap) we have collection points all over...and utility drivers that will move the material to the baling area.
Like I said, baling is about as unskilled as it gets here. But this is what happens when we're shorthanded -
The material can't get baled fast enough, the utility driver starts running out of space to place the material. The driver may try to place it down one of our aisles, but now it's in the way of equipment pickers. They can't reach pallets of product unless they move the cardboard or plastic out of the way.
If the utility driver can't find a place to put it, then they just stop taking the material from the collection points. The employees then run out of space to place the cardboard and start piling it on an overhead rack that runs all along the conveyor. Next thing you know, you're up to your ears in cardboard.
Since the baling job doesn't require any particular skill, it's actually hard to keep the best workers there. We always have better places to put them. Or, again, they feel underutilized and find some other job. But since we don't put our best there, we have to spend more time supervising the area to make sure the employees aren't sneaking off to check the cell phones (that they aren't supposed to be carrying in the first place) and making sure they're actually working. That's assuming they show up regularly in the first place.
It's particularly frustrating when you get someone who is a good fit. Who is reliable, works hard, and shows up regularly. Frustrating because you can only keep them for a year (assuming they complete that year), and once they're gone you're right back on the merry-go-round.
I run into that in my current role as well, and still have some associates upset when a particularly reliable temp completed his year we couldn't keep him. Ever since then, it's been a month or so where we're shorthanded while I interview candidates for the position, followed by a month or two where the position is filled, then losing them for one reason or another. Oh and, btw, if we're in overtime or have heavy volume and we're shorthanded I don't like to pull my full time associates away from processing to do that job. Which means half the time my shipping associate and I are doing the bulk of it, and I ask my associates to do some of the other tasks (i.e. wrapping their pallets instead of staging them by the wrapper for the temp to handle).
Some of this speaks volumes about the current labor pool in the area. I think unemployment is actually somewhat low (about 4%) so it's hard to get any response to a posting in the first place. Some of it, however, also speaks to how little incentive they have to do a good job. Or rather, their only real reward is to do well enough to get hired on full time. That and the fact that warehouse work does pay more than minimum wage.
Cardboard baler is definitely an unskilled position - yet the consequences of treating the position as easily replaceable can have a big impact on our operations.
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