A huge number of industries are experiencing difficulty hiring right now. Nowhere is that more true than for logistics businesses, who were already experiencing a gap in employees before the pandemic began.
There is good news, though. Workers have been very vocal about what will bring them to the negotiating table and back in the warehouse. MWCold has been accommodating many of these requests for years. So, we’re here to help share our experience. By the way, we’re hiring, in case you like what you see.
Offer Higher Wages
A lot of employers are resistant to increasing their costs with higher wages, but the reality is that people work for compensation and to pay for their lives outside of the workplace. When it’s hard to find workers, offering a more lucrative wage is a quick way to grow your team. Doing the research to find out what is competitive for your field is important, but offering above and beyond your competitors and communicating it early in the application process will quickly make you a candidate’s number one choice.
Focus on Retention
Bringing in new workers is key to alleviate the pressure from the labor shortage, but you don’t want to lose sight of your existing team. They have ample opportunities to find a new position quickly with the experience they’ve gained in your warehouse. Plus, they’re the ones that will be training the new staff, giving them a realistic sense of what work life balance looks like and helping them feel welcome and safe in their new positions. So, ensuring your workers are cared for is what will keep your business on track. What do they need to succeed, and how can we be extending their careers today?
Hire for Values, Not Experience
At MWCold, our entire organization is run in mind with our basic core values of respect, integrity and professionalism. We even extend it to our hiring process because we believe that our first-class team and modernized training techniques can teach skills to anyone for an entry-level job, but we don’t want to compromise on the values that make our team great people and provide great experiences for our customers. In the long run, hiring for our core values improves culture, fit, and retention through shared priorities. Simultaneously, it provides career opportunities to those who haven’t been capable to take them in the past.
Provide a Robust Network of Support
In a given lifetime, we’re all bound to have a few changes that come at us fast. Workers today want to know that their companies will continue to support them in these changes. That starts with a comprehensive series of benefits including affordable healthcare, worker’s compensation, retirement planning, paid time off and parental leave, but it doesn’t end there. Building a network of support in the supply chain also means creating opportunities to learn new skills, find mentorship, create safe spaces and more. Ultimately, you want a workplace culture of support that spreads throughout your supply chain.
Encourage Two-Way Communication
Oftentimes, workers will tell you what they need long before someone turns down a job offer, leaves their employer or has a public disagreement that can hurt morale at large. At MWCold, we believe that communication should be frequent, functional, and fun (or at least friendly), and that has to go both ways in order to make the workplace somewhere employees want to take part. What have your employees told you recently that was surprising or insightful? Did you listen for understanding or to react quickly? Knowing the difference and using it to support your workers can make a huge difference in their workplace happiness.
Supply chain work is hard work. It’s hard on bodies. It’s hard on schedules. It’s hard on families. As such, we need to be building workspaces that compensate for these sacrifices our workers make with more than a pizza party or an appreciation week.
We are so grateful for our MWCold team, who have worked tirelessly to keep supply chains moving through this pandemic and every day since their careers began. We want to make sure they are well cared for and motivated to provide great service to our customers. We’re also looking to grow our team like much of our industry, and we think we have a lot to offer. Take a look and see if we have a position that would be a good fit for your career.
