Shift planning for warehouses
Optimise warehouse manpower planning to achieve maximum performance
Technology-enabled services from warehouse shift planning and workforce management experts
Increase warehouse efficiency
Improve warehouse productivity
Improve warehouse performance
Our experience
Shift planning for warehouses should be a priority
The success of your warehouse operations is directly influenced by shift planning and workforce management.
But are your warehouse manpower planning practices staying ahead of changing demand, increasing automation and shift worker expectations?
Legacy approaches to shift planning for warehouses can contribute to high labour costs, capacity and service issues and a challenging recruitment and retention environment.
We’ll help optimise shift planning in your warehouse and adopt warehouse workforce management best practice to ensure working patterns meet the needs of your business and its operatives.
Looking to optimise shift planning and workforce management in your warehouse?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with a shift work expert who’ll give you valuable feedback and tips.
The benefits of optimising shift planning for warehouses
Optimising shift planning and workforce management in your warehouse will quickly deliver significant benefits.
Increase warehouse efficiency
Effective shift planning in warehouses can release more capacity and value from your operatives contracted hours…eliminating unnecessary overtime and reducing reliance on agency workers to meet demand.
Efficient warehouse operations can be delivered by ensuring shift patterns, rosters and schedules maximise the utilisation of your core workforce, meaning agency staff can be used less and in a more targeted way.
In some cases optimising shift planning and workforce management could help you reduce total labour costs in your warehouse by 10% or more.
Increase warehouse productivity
Shift planning for warehouses needs to align to demand if you are going to increase warehouse productivity and avoid underutilisation of operatives and other assets.
Fully optimising shift planning and warehouse management could help you could deliver a significant improvement in productivity metrics.
Effective warehouse manpower planning and scheduling can also improve operative job satisfaction and reduce sickness absence, which further increases warehouse productivity.
You could reduce sickness absence by up to 55% in your warehouse.
Improve warehouse performance
Adopting shift planning and warehouse workforce management best practice can help increase capacity, avoid resourcing shortfalls and support service delivery excellence.
Optimised warehouse manpower planning will give you the flexibility to ensure operatives are available when they are most needed.
A modern flexible approach to shift planning in warehouses can also underpin operative satisfaction, recruitment and retention.
Being an employer with attractive approach to warehouse workforce management will help you find and keep operatives who are happy, healthy and motivated to perform.
Looking to improve warehouse, efficiency, productivity and performance?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with a warehouse shift planning and workforce management expert.
Warehouse shift planning and workforce management support
Our experts have over three decade’s experience in shift planning for warehouses and warehouse workforce management best practice.
The team will help you analyse your current approach to warehouse manpower planning and identify opportunities to deliver rapid improvements.
Analyse
Our sophisticated approach to data analytics will assess your current shift planning and workforce management approaches and identify a pathway to rapid improvement.
Create
We’ll help you create warehouse schedules that unlock huge benefits and ensure they are underpinned by robust warehouse workforce management systems and policies.
Engage
We’ll help engage your operatives to ensure shift planning and workforce management in your warehouse supports their health and wellbeing and meets their preferences.
Software to support shift planning in warehouses
Most warehouse management systems and warehouse scheduling software is not designed to provide fully optimised shift planning and workforce management.
Improving warehouse, efficiency, productivity and performance requires deep subject matter expertise, operational understanding and the ability to engage effectively with operatives.
Rather than offering ‘traditional’ warehouse scheduling software, optashift has developed a range of proprietary tools that our experts use on your behalf to deliver warehouse shift planning and workforce management optimisation and improvement.
You’ll benefit from the increased visibility, efficiency and assurance provided by technology…but without the challenges posed by warehouse scheduling software contracts, systems integration, configuration and user support.
View
This data analytics tool provides granular measurement, monitoring and reporting capabilities to quickly surface key warehouse shift planning and workforce management insights.
Plan
Supports rapid generation of bespoke warehouse schedule options whilst the visualisation capability supports interactive collaboration with your operatives, so shift planning in your warehouse reflects their specific needs.
Hub
Enables efficient delivery of warehouse operative sentiment and preference gathering, health and wellbeing programmes and best practice training around warehouse shift planning and workforce management.
Looking for warehouse scheduling software?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with a shift work expert to see how our approach differs from traditional warehouse scheduling software.
Warehouse shift planning and workforce management experts
Warehouse shift planning and workforce management is time consuming, complex and sensitive…but optashift can help.
We are home to the largest collective of experts in the UK with a three-decade long track record of embedding optimised warehouse schedules and workforce management best practice in a diverse range of businesses.
This includes warehouses run by brands, manufacturers, e-commerce providers and third party logistics operators (3PL).
Our experience
Want to speak to an expert about shift planning in warehouses or warehouse workforce management?
Schedule a free 30-minute consultation with a shift work expert who’ll give you valuable feedback and tips.
FAQ
Q: Do you support 24/7 warehouse operations?
A: Yes, optimising 24 7 warehouse operations is a significant element of our support.
Warehouse schedules in 24 7 environments require careful consideration given the challenges of maintaining round the clock efficiency whilst managing additional operational and wellbeing factors such as night shifts, shift rotations, holiday cover, weekend working, facilities and a wide range of other considerations.
Q: What elements of shift planning in warehouses do you focus on?
A: optashift principally focuses on warehouse manpower planning and warehouse shift patterns.
Our experts can help you create shift patterns that align labour supply with demand, which delivers significant warehouse efficiency, productivity and performance gains.
We can also support wider areas of workforce planning such as creating tailored warehouse schedules that appeal to diverse demographics in support of your recruitment and retention strategy.
Q: What elements of warehouse workforce management do you focus on?
A: Within warehouse workforce management we mainly focus on optimising key rostering and warehouse scheduling systems and practices.
This includes improving policy and processes around shift work contracts, holiday management, shift swaps, shift bidding and many other factors that influence performance and warehouse operator satisfaction.
We also help optimise warehouse scheduling software to ensure it is configured and capable of supporting warehouse workforce management best practice.
Q: What warehouse workforce management best practices do you use?
A: There is no one single approach to warehouse workforce management, as every operation and workforce is different.
We consider a wide range of factors around the warehouse scheduling process which relate to operations, legislation and the working environment.
Ultimately workforce management best practices for your business will be the ones that effectively balance operational and performance requirements with the needs of your operatives.
Q: Can you provide any examples of warehouse shift patterns you have created?
A: We have created thousands of warehouse shift patterns, but they are only relevant to the demand, operating processes and employee preferences of a given customer.
Any template shift pattern will need tailoring to your specific warehouse. You can find out more about them in the ‘Resources’ section of this website.
Q: Do you offer warehouse scheduling software?
A: We have a range of digital tools which help optimise the fundamentals of warehouse shift planning and workforce management.
We do not offer our own version of ‘traditional’ warehouse scheduling software (which typically focuses on roster management, time and attendance and payroll capabilities).
However, our experts can define what you need from warehouse scheduling, support vendor procurement and help with the implementation and configuration of any chosen system.
This will ensure your warehouse scheduling software can underpin a fully optimised approach to warehouse shift planning and workforce management.
Book a warehouse shift planning and workforce management consultation
Sometimes it’s easier just to ask an expert.
We offer a free, confidential and informal 30-minute consultation call with an optashift consultant who has over 20 years’ experience delivering shift planning in warehouses and embedding warehouse workforce management best practice.
During this call, the expert will use a structured checklist to provide a quick remote appraisal of your approach and opportunities for optimisation.
They will then send a tailored and prioritised summary of recommendations to you within 24 hours of the call.
Use this form to secure a free warehouse shift planning and workforce management consultation