Your distribution center is a main hub for your business, handling millions of dollars in inventory and processing orders for clients, customers, and physical store locations every day. Since your distribution center is such a critical part of your supply chain, it must be a top priority to create the right type of work environment that will promote safety, productivity, and efficiency. Your business needs to meet and exceed its target goals in order to remain profitable, which is why implementing the perfect environment is key. In addition to improving safety standards and training your employees and managers, you also want to work with a distribution center staffing agency in order to recruit the team you need to get the job done.
Start with Safety
Putting your focus on the safety of your distribution center will immediately result in benefits to your business. As it stands, more than five percent of all warehousing industry employees suffer from a work-related injury or illness, according to the Bureau of LaborStatistics. However, by implementing safety protocols and educating employees on the importance of a safe work environment, your distribution center will experience fewer injuries. At the same time, productivity will increase and order selection errors will decline. There are a number of ways to promote safety in the workplace, including the following tips:
- Have a Top-Down Approach – Your employees and distribution center managers will not make safety a priority unless they see leaders actively implementing the culture. Create a safety plan with benchmark goals so your team can measure progress and discover room for improvement.
- Reward Safe Behavior – The fact remains that employees will feel pressure to meet productivity numbers by any means possible, even if that means skirting the safety regulations from time to time. Weed out such behavior by rewarding safe practices and discouraging those that put employees, machinery, and products at risk.
- Appoint a Committee – Empower employees in your distribution center to create a set of best practices for the entire team. This will lead to higher accountability and a sense of ownership when it comes to reaching productivity and succeeding
When you start with safety, you lay a solid foundation for the rest of the work environment, which is built on expertise, leadership, teamwork, and passionate associates. Establishing a healthy workplace culture that helps the company achieve its goals is essential.
Training and Workplace Development
Creating the right distribution center environment is also dependent upon the skills and certifications of your employees. Ensuring that new hires are properly and thoroughly trained on all necessary equipment is an important step in your business process because it drastically improves the quality that your team is able to achieve. A distribution center staffing agency can assist by filling targeted roles with individuals that have the level of expertise and qualifications needed to be the right fit for your organization.
It is not enough to only train your employees once when they are hired, and then never bring up the subject again. Especially when you are implementing new processes or equipment, it is necessary to retrain and educate everyone in your distribution center. This display of caring, and the fostering of dialogue between management and associates are required in order to build a workplace environment that is efficient. At the same time, they also give employees the opportunity to learn new skill sets and advance so that your company benefits by the growth and dedication that results.
While training improves the quality of work in your distribution center, it is also required as part of your compliance program. In addition, it gives you the opportunity to identify key members of the team that may fit into leadership and management roles in the future.
Invest in Your Leaders
Recruiting, supporting, and investing in your employees will help them grow into the leaders that will not only effectively run your distribution center, but the ones that will take your entire operation to the next level. This is done through training and personal development strategies mentioned previously, as well as by creating an atmosphere that welcomes new ideas and creativity. For example, if your distribution center falls short on order location accuracy goals, you may very well discover new solutions by gathering together employees and managers.
Allowing your leaders to make the decisions necessary to improve processes is also key. Create a procedure to help your team find and analyze any problems with efficiency and quality. This way your distribution center will be ahead of the curve with a proactive approach, rather than spending precious resources trying to fix things after the fact. Supporting your team members with technological investments also helps improve cost performance and quality control. Warehouse management systems and automated pickers help reduce inaccuracies and make it easier for employees to get the job done the right way.
Investing in your employees also means actively seeking out those that will make the best fit in your company. When it comes to filling positions with the most experienced and qualified candidate, working with a distribution center staffing agency is a no-brainer. These organizations know that your time and energy are best spent on improving your business, and that it is costly to search for the right candidate on your own. Ideally, you’d hire the person that has the skills your team needs. But how does that person fit into the work environment you’ve created? And what has that person done to position himself or herself as the one you need who doesn’t show up on a resume?
Delrecruiters is a warehouse and distribution center recruiting agency that works tirelessly to find, screen, and interview potential candidates that you are looking for. Whether your distribution center is in need of a new director, general manager, quality control team leader, mechanic, engineer, or any other position, Delrecruiters has the experts on staff to find the support personnel you need to complement your existing team and improve your operation as a whole. Learn more about filling your open distribution center positions with the help of a staffing agency by contacting a representative at Delrecruiters today.
Sources:
