How logistics solutions can improve employee productivity | #hrmanagement #hrexecutive

In HR, the dream goal is to maximise the productivity, safety and job satisfaction of employees at your business. While it’s rare that a technology arises that can genuinely facilitate all three of these goals, every now and then a golden solution comes along and surprises us all.

Seemingly, this is the case with automated logistics solutions. They can decrease the need for workers to be placed in dangerous environments and reduce the number of workers needed to carry out operations effectively, while allowing the remaining employees to do jobs that are more stimulating, interesting and safe than the laborious tasks that logistics solutions can take care of.

Automated loading solutions

Automated loading solutions are one of the primary means of improving employee productivity, while also increasing the safety of their working conditions. They improve productivity in the following ways:

Fewer employees

Automated loading solutions can make a lot of the human functions of conventional loading systems redundant. Ultimately, this massively increases the productivity of each remaining employee, allowing businesses to employ far fewer members of staff. 

This results in savings on wages, which can be one of the most significant costs in bigger logistics operations that have to hire a large number of individuals. The roles that the remaining employees will need to fill are likely to be a lot safer as well, which leads us on to our next point.

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Safer working conditions

Automated loading solutions dramatically decrease the risk of accidents occurring in the warehouse environment. Historically, warehouses have always been dangerous environments – the British Safety Council found that over 1,300 employees in the UK alone are hospitalised each year as a result of forklift accidents. Some of these hospitalisations resulted in life-changing injuries, some even in death.

Automated loading solutions from companies like Joloda often remove the need for man-operated machinery such as forklifts in the workplace, massively decreasing the risk of accidents occurring. This leads to the creation of a workplace where employees can operate without the constant worry of injury, often leading to increased levels of employee productivity.

This also decreases the amount of time off that employees need to take as a result of minor to serious accidents and injuries. This means a more reliable workforce, and a decreased risk of workplace lawsuits being brought against the company in question.

Attract better talent

The best talent in any industry will always gravitate towards places where they can operate in a safe environment and be appropriately remunerated. By cutting operational costs overall, automated loading systems can save businesses a substantial amount of money, allowing them to offer attractive pay packages that are appropriate for the best individuals in the business.

By enhancing the safety of the workplace, automated loading solutions can help a business to develop its reputation as a brand that values its employees and is able to care for them more than adequately. This further helps attract only the best talent, resulting in a logistics operation run by experts in their trade.

Predictive AI

While automated loading solutions can help reduce the need for manual labour in the warehouse and thereby massively increase the productivity of the remaining employees, there are also logistics solutions that can help employees to be productive in different ways. 

These tools are largely the result of rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, and can help employees with the following tasks.

Accurate data analysis

One of the most important parts of the logistics process lies in planning. Without effective and accurate planning, the whole finely strung operation would simply fall to pieces. Planning in the logistics industry often requires poring over vast and complex data sets, analysing that data and then making predictions based on those analyses.

While humans are capable of data analysis, AI solutions are starting to facilitate the same functions but far quicker and with a much lower margin of error. Employees can use these Ai solutions to increase their productivity in multiple different areas.

Demand prediction

One of the key areas where AI can help employees is in predicting demand. Predicting demand accurately is important for multiple reasons; it ensures that during the busiest periods, your business will always have sufficient stock to not sell out, while avoiding massive stock build-ups during quieter periods. This in turn results in optimised storage in warehouses, further cutting costs.

AI can help human operators accurately predict demand throughout the year, spotting patterns that humans might miss completely, all in a fraction of the time it would take someone to do manually. This can reduce the number of employees needed in buying departments while increasing the productivity of those who remain.

More efficient route planning

Efficient route planning is massively important in the logistics industry. It enables faster delivery, while saving costs on driver pay and fuel. By decreasing fuel usage, route planning also helps to decrease the overall environmental impact of the logistics process.

Route planners used to have to operate solely based on traffic reports on the news, knowledge of an area and a little bit of instinct. Nowadays, it’s far more complex and a whole lot more effective – AI can help operators to predict the most efficient route possible, taking into consideration multiple factors such as live traffic data, upcoming events, and weight and height restrictions.

This can help make a single individual as productive as a whole team, allowing businesses to cut back without having any negative effects on the service they’re able to provide.

Future developments

While there are already a number of very attractive solutions in the logistics industry, it’s certainly an area to keep watching. In multiple areas, especially those involving AI, there are wide-ranging advances that are occurring at lightning speed. Most of these will be a sight for sore eyes in HR teams, offering increased safety and productivity when it comes to the employees at their business.