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Managing a logistics team is a complex task requiring both finesse and strategy. While seasonal fluctuations and peaks in activity often present companies with the challenge of recruiting temporary warehouse workers, with our Dashdoc Flow expert eye, we explore effective methods for optimizing your team management, motivating your troops, gaining efficiency and potentially reducing your reliance on temporary positions.
What are the essentials of a successful team management?
Plan, plan, plan
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Just as transport planning is the foundation on which transport operations are built, strategic day-to-day planning is the cornerstone of effective logistics team management.
Accurate forecasting of requirements, based on historical data and market forecasts, can significantly reduce the need for temporary staff.
Using advanced supply chain management software to anticipate labor requirements can enable schedules and shifts to be adjusted accordingly.
Internal communication and team training
How to communicate effectively with your logistics team?
Setting clear objectives: this is the first step when you bring an employee into your team. He or she must feel part of the common objectives, and visualize his or her personal contribution to these objectives. He or she will therefore have his or her own objectives, set by mutual agreement. These enable measurement, monitoring and improvement, and are therefore a source of motivation. You can also break down each objective, which corresponds to a major theme, into smaller tasks to have precise logistical KPIs and a complete description of his or her actions.
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Many managers, including logistics team managers, use SMART objectives: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Time-bound. They are not too vague or too spread out in time, which helps to anchor a team member's contribution in reality.
Organize regular meetings: take the temperature of your teams, review their situation, the company's situation and the achievement of objectives.
Of course, the language used must be accessible, direct and transparent. You need to win your staff's trust, so don't beat about the bush.
When talking about technical issues, always include examples whenever possible. Explanations must be concrete and advice applicable as quickly as possible.
Giving employees the floor is a good way of letting them express themselves and putting yourself in their shoes.
Encourage collaboration between team members: cooperation must become common practice within the team. As logistics team leader, you need to motivate team members to work together on shared projects.
Making use of digital platforms that centralize information, such as Google Drive, DropBox, an operations management tool like a WMS or a slot booking tool, can go a long way towards improving the flow of information and hence synergy.
It is also advisable to organize team-building activities outside working hours on a regular basis, once a month for example (sports, creative activities, team evenings, etc.).
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Recognize performance: if your teams are working well and even going beyond the call of duty, it's essential to verbalize it! Acknowledging an employee's efforts and successes in a formal way will help them to embrace the company's vision.
Of course, there are various ways of recognizing a job well done: bonuses, promotions, time-off benefits, offering even more training, meetings with mentors, and so on.
Why invest in training?
Investing in ongoing employee training to develop versatility is essential. By training your team in a variety of tasks, you create a flexible workforce capable of adapting to different needs without systematically resorting to hiring temps.
Not to mention that it also fosters a sense of belonging and job satisfaction.
How do you develop these varied skills?
A logistics team leader can set aside regular slots for conferences, online workshops or coaching sessions with an expert.
Make an overview of your employees' needs and desires, and for a set hour, look at what training courses exist in relation to the points raised. Draw up a list of training courses for the next six months.
Process optimization
Regularly reviewing your processes to identify bottlenecks and inefficiencies can reveal opportunities for improvement that reduce the need for additional staff.
But when it comes to identifying them, don't skimp on the use of technology: automation and robotics offer solutions for handling repetitive and intensive tasks.
Corporate culture and commitment
A positive corporate culture that values and rewards staff can reduce turnover and increase employee commitment. Motivated, committed teams are more productive and can handle higher workloads without the need for additional manpower.
Working with innovative, intelligent tools
Today, prediction is becoming more and more refined, not only for inventory assessment, but also for goods arrivals. Distribution centers are particularly sensitive to this.
Being able to inform your team in good time, and anticipate rather than react, is a key challenge for site managers and logistics dock managers alike.
Most companies work with the market's leading WMS (Warehouse Management System), but others go even further. They work with appointment scheduling software, such as Dashdoc Flow, which simplifies access to a slot for carriers who need to visit a logistics site. Centralized data exchange, simplicity of operation (just a few clicks and it's done) and access to documents such as the security protocol: advantages of dock scheduling appointments are multiples. It benefits both the carrier and the logistics platform, which saves time and can start smoothing out its activity to avoid peaks.
Reducing the use of temporary warehouse workers: is it really possible?
Although temporary workers remain a practical solution for managing peaks in activity, there are several strategies that can help minimize the need for them:
Flexible working hours: adopting flexible working hours means that the available workforce can be adjusted in line with actual needs.
Strategic partnerships: collaborate with other companies to share human resources during off-peak periods.
Technology and automation: invest in technological solutions to achieve better prediction, automate tasks and improve efficiency.
One of the objectives of one of our current customers (DHL) is precisely to smooth out the workload of the different teams (handling, administration, manager, drivers) through the use of our Dashdoc Flow planning tool. The project was launched in October 2023 and is now taking shape.
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