How Effective Is Your Labor Management Program?

Take Our Quiz to Find Out

With inflation hurting margins, labor markets remaining tight and lingering supply-chain issues underscoring the need to maximize operational efficiency, there’s never been a more critical time to assess the state of your labor management program (LMP) and make needed upgrades.

It can be difficult to know where to start the evaluation process. We developed a brief quiz to identify your program’s current strengths and areas needing improvement.

Are You Missing Opportunities to Improve Labor Management System?

You may be surprised to discover labor management approaches that worked well for your organization in years past require updating to reflect emerging economic conditions, recruiting in a tight labor market and employee retention requirements.

And you may be relieved to find that some of your core processes are not only sound but can be readily integrated into a more holistic approach supported by state-of-the-art labor management software. The best such programs gather all real-time labor data into a central hub, enabling you to maximize workforce performance, boost retention rates and find new operational efficiencies.

Before taking the quiz, please review these essential components of a high-performance workforce.

Labor Planning with Dynamic Labor Standards

Especially in today’s distribution center environments, using one-determinant historical labor standards (cases per hour, lines per hour, etc.) won’t necessarily improve operational efficiency. A better approach: Model your labor requirements using dynamic labor standards that can flex based on order types and the mix of work associated with each assignment. This approach represents the fairest way to manage performance, supports self-funding incentive plans and results in much more accurate labor planning and forecasting.

Performance Management

Real-time performance data helps you pinpoint and quickly correct unproductive practices. With timely feedback and specific coaching, even poor performers can emerge as superstars.

Your LMS should make it easy to give employees frequent feedback on and recognition for their performance. What we reward gets repeated. What gets repeated becomes habit.

Training & Observation

Training and coaching must be a continuous process to achieve high performance. New SOPs need regular reinforcement to keep employees from reverting to the familiar way they did things before. Your LMS needs to be able to automatically determine which employees need coaching in real-time and then monitor the execution of these training sessions.

Visibility Across Systems

Siloing labor information in multiple systems (WMS, Voice, time and attendance, manual spreadsheets, etc.) prevents you from having a holistic view of operational performance metrics. Your LMS should be able to integrate data from multiple systems and present operational data through business intelligence dashboards, allowing you to determine improvement opportunities.

How well does your current LMS support each component of a high-performance operation? Spend a few minutes taking the following 10-question quiz. When you’re finished, we’ll provide a complimentary readout of your labor program’s strengths and areas for improvement. Armed with this intel, you’ll be able to make smarter strategic decisions about which upgrade opportunities to explore further.

TAKE THE QUIZ