Key Strategies for New Warehouse Managers

Posted on 11/20 by Erin Helms

Embarking on a journey as a new warehouse manager is both exhilarating and challenging. As you step into the dynamic world of warehouse management, you’re entrusted with a variety of crucial tasks, including orchestrating the seamless flow of goods, optimizing processes, and ensuring the efficiency of your team. Maintaining a right-sized workforce is also commonly part of the equation, which is why partnering with a warehouse staffing agency is often critical for success. Fortunately, new warehouse managers can excel by leveraging the right approach. Here are some success strategies for new warehouse managers that you can start using today.

Why Is Effective Warehouse Management Important?

Warehouses are typically fast-paced environments, with products and materials moving in and out with surprising speed. Additionally, warehousing is a core business function for many companies. Without effective warehouse management, productivity across the organization can tumble dramatically. In many cases, ineffective warehouses also negatively impact customers, potentially causing revenue to drop or customer turnover to rise. Resulting harm to the company’s reputation can also make capturing new customers difficult, stymying the organization’s ability to grow. Based on that, effective warehouse management is a critical part of the broader success equation. When warehouse operations are efficient, it ensures the organization runs seamlessly. It boosts customer satisfaction, leading to higher revenues, greater profitability, and improved customer retention.

How Does a Warehouse Staffing Agency Support New Managers?

Many new warehouse managers focus heavily on internal operations when beginning in the role. However, ensuring a right-sized workforce is critical to overall success. In many cases, new warehouse managers underestimate how challenging recruitment and hiring is, particularly since many have little to no direct experience with the associated processes. As a result, if they try to go it alone, they may fall short of their targets, leaving their warehouse shorthanded for an extended period. That’s why partnering with the right warehouse temp agencies is so crucial. New warehouse managers can hire more efficiently by finding a reliable, professional staffing firm to support recruitment. Here’s a closer look at how a warehouse staffing agency supports new managers.

Access to Skilled Staff

One of the most significant recruitment challenges most new warehouse managers face is finding suitably skilled candidates to fill vacant positions. Overall, the labor market is far tighter than it’s been in years past, limiting access to talent. Additionally, screening candidates to ensure they have the necessary capabilities is trickier than many new managers expect, and that can lead to a higher occurrence of bad hires. Fortunately, it’s possible to overcome this challenge by partnering with a warehouse staffing agency. When you connect with a staffing firm, you’ll gain access to a vetted talent pool brimming with experienced and capable candidates. Additionally, recruitment agencies continuously refine their candidate sourcing approach, ensuring they can meet job seekers where they are and effectively reach them. Plus, recruitment firms focus on providing exceptional candidate experience. By doing so, they have an easier time ensuring job seeker engagement. Since engagement plays a significant role in whether a candidate will accept a position, their candidate-focused approach typically yields excellent results. With a staffing agency by your side, you essentially can leverage the existing talent network. Plus, since the recruiters focus on the candidate’s experience, it can elevate your employer's brand. Together, that dramatically increases your access to talent.

Temporary Warehouse Staffing Promotes Flexibility

Many warehouses experience seasonal fluctuations in demand. When demand increases, new hires are necessary to maintain a right-sized workforce. Once demand slows, workforce reductions are often essential. Otherwise, the company ends up paying for personnel it doesn’t require. While many warehouses rely on traditional hiring methods to address seasonal demand fluctuations, those aren’t the most cost-effective. Plus, conventional strategies introduce additional risk. Hiring and then laying off workers in response to demand changes usually involves unemployment-related costs and administrative burdens, neither of which is simple to manage. By using a temporary warehouse staffing firm instead, new warehouse managers can use flexible hiring programs to maintain agility, minimize costs, and reduce risk. When demand increases, companies can request temp employees from the recruitment agency. During the assignment, the temporary employees remain on the staffing firm’s payroll, dramatically reducing risk and significantly lowering the administrative burden associated with hiring. Then, when demand drops, you can simply release the temp worker from the assignment, as there is no long-term obligation. Temporary arrangements also provide versatility for warehouse projects. If you need a specific skill to handle a task but won’t require it long-term, you can bring in a temp employee with the capabilities you require. Then, when the project is complete, you can release them from the position without having to worry about ongoing expenses or management.

Expertise in Matching Qualified Candidates to Specific Roles

Many new warehouse managers know what hard skills are required to handle the duties associated with a specific role. However, there’s more to effective candidate matching than ensuring they have the right technical capabilities. Soft skills and culture fit are also critical to the success equation, and they're far more difficult to assess for managers with limited hiring experience. When you partner with warehouse temp agencies instead of managing hiring internally, you gain access to recruitment professionals who understand the nuances of matching qualified candidates to specific roles. They can evaluate technical capabilities, soft skills, and culture fit during the vetting process, ensuring that selected job seekers are strong matches not just to the position but to your company as a whole. Additionally, the recruiters know how to target job descriptions to attract the exact type of talent your company requires. Often, that proves critical when you need a candidate with niche capabilities that aren’t widely available. However, it provides value when you’re recruiting for any role, as tailored job descriptions are better at attracting capable candidates.

Provide Training Opportunities for Warehouse Employees

Robust training is often the key to ongoing workforce success. When team members hone critical capabilities, they’re more effective and efficient in their position. Plus, training can provide employees with a sense of confidence, leading to higher morale and better engagement. When you work with a staffing agency, you can leverage various services to offer training opportunities to warehouse employees. Typically, your recruitment firm will create a customized onboarding program designed explicitly for your company. Then, they’ll provide that training to all selected new hires, ensuring a critical step is complete before the incoming employee begins in their role. Additionally, when you partner with a recruitment firm, you can leverage temp-to-hire arrangements to support your training-related goals. Along with using temp-to-hire programs to conduct working interviews, you can also use them to cover the initial new hire training period. Then, you can make sure that the employee you’re evaluating or training is genuinely capable of excelling in the role before extending a permanent job offer. Essentially, partnering with a staffing agency allows you to manage new hire training more strategically. Along with direct support from the recruitment team during onboarding, you can have new hire training periods while reducing risk and maintaining workforce agility. In turn, it’s easier to cultivate your ideal workforce.

Temporary Staffing Proves to be Cost-Efficient for New Managers

In many cases, hiring is far more expensive than new warehouse managers expect, particularly when they’re filling temporary positions. Advertising openings can mean paying a variety of fees, such as costs associated with listing vacancies on a major job board. Plus, the time required to create job descriptions, manage job ads, and screen candidates is costly. While you’re handling those activities, you can’t perform other critical duties, and that can harm productivity and profitability. There are also expenses related to having a temp employee on a company’s payroll. First, there’s usually an administrative burden, which costs company human resources team’s time. Second, the business has to assume responsibility for unemployment and workers’ compensation, leading to higher expenses and greater risk. Costs associated with various benefits are also part of the equation, driving the price up further. Fortunately, it’s possible to use a more cost-efficient approach. When you leverage temporary warehouse staffing programs through a recruitment firm, it takes on many of the expenses outlined above. The staffing agency will dedicate the time and energy required to recruit and screen candidates. Additionally, since the employees remain on the firm’s payroll, they’re taking on the administrative burden, as well as handling the costs associated with unemployment, worker’s compensation, and any provided benefits. As a result, warehouses experience significant savings, making this the more cost-effective strategy.

Partner with a Warehouse Staffing Agency for Success in Your Role as a New Manager

As a new warehouse manager, having an experienced warehouse staffing agency as a partner makes a difference. With the right recruitment firm by your side, you can increase your access to talent, streamline hiring, and leverage flexible hiring solutions to meet a variety of needs. If you’re looking for a dependable, professional recruitment agency, LaborMAX is here to support your success. Contact us to learn more about our customizable and affordable hiring solutions today!

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