About a third of warehouses report labor turnover rates of 25% or higher. In operations that heavily depend on temporary workers, turnover rates can go as high as 50%. Whether it be due to peak seasons or sudden changes in the market, labor turnover impacts workforce productivity as new employees must quickly learn new technologies while the rest of the workforce adapts to slower processes. With each new batch of employees, warehouses must also spend weeks to train them, resulting in nearly a $64,000 yearly expense to remediate a 30% turnover rate. 

With customer demands remaining at an all-time high, warehouses and manufacturing plants must find a way to reduce turnover rates and accelerate onboarding without hindering service quality. To accomplish this, we recommend the following tips.

  1. Choose a familiar operating system for new employees – Outdated operating systems like Windows Mobile slow down onboarding due to their slow performance and complicated interfaces. To prevent this issue, Android for Enterprise serves as the best option since it’s already familiar to most smartphone users and runs on an open ecosystem, allowing you to seamlessly convert your legacy apps to a touch-screen interface. 
  2. Increase operational visibility to diminish travel time – Experienced workers spend the most time traveling between aisles and docks as they assemble orders. New hires can spend even more time since they are unfamiliar with your facility. Therefore, greater operational visibility can help employees readily locate inventory, enable simultaneous order assembly, and notify teams in real-time of any changes and emergencies without disrupting workflows or constantly rearranging travel paths.  
  3. Streamline essential tasks onto a mobile device – Multiple devices require multiple training sessions. By streamlining everyday tasks such as data processing, scanning, and communication in one mobile device, you can reduce training times while ensuring worker comfort.

How we did it with Zebra

While there are many viable solutions capable of expanding these tips, Zebra’s modernized picking technologies have been proven to successfully integrate all three goals with Zebra Fulfillment Edge. By deploying head-mounted displays for hands-free picking and Android-based computers, warehouses were able to:

  • Onboard new hires to be as productive as experienced pickers in two days
  • Boost picking accuracy without overwhelming the workforce
  • Pick multiple orders at once
  • Beat WMS expected pick times for faster throughput

Download the full report here.

For more tips on how to reduce turnover with feasible modernization, contact CMAC today for a free assessment of your workflows to get started.