7 Ways to Improve Warehouse Efficiency and Operations

If your warehouse isn’t running efficiently, you’re not only losing time, you’re losing money. Whether you have hourly, daily, weekly, or monthly targets, it’s vital to ensure you hit them or exceed them. However, that doesn’t just happen by accident. You have to strategically plan how to have efficient operations. From the people you hire to the way you train them, all of that matters.

As experts in warehouse and factory staffing, we’ve seen our fair share of well-run – and not-so-well-run – warehouses. In this article, we’re going to share 7 tips that will help you not only improve efficiency to help you hit your current targets, but will also set you up to hit every target in the future.

1.    Hire the right people

Without the right employees, you’re not going to be able to hit your operational efficiency goals in the warehouse. Full-time, part-time, temporary, and seasonal staff make-up your warehouse workers, and finding the best ones for the job isn’t easy. That’s why we recommend factories and warehouses work with staffing agencies like Noble Human Resources Solutions to recruit and hire their warehouse workers.

We specialize in hiring for factories and warehouse, and we have a massive database of qualified and skilled candidates who are ready to take on a variety of roles in the warehouse. We carefully vet all candidates and conduct reference checks to ensure they are reliable and hardworking. Plus, we can supply warehouse staff at a moment’s notice. When you find yourself falling short on your targets, we can send skilled staff to help you increase your productivity right away.

2.    Create a thorough employee onboarding and training process

Whether you have permanent staff or temporary workers, it’s important to ensure they are well trained from the start. Create an onboarding program for all new employees that gives them an overview of what is expected of them and what targets they are required to hit. Include relevant job training based on their roles. Be sure to also answer any FAQs in advance – before people even have the chance to ask.

Taking this proactive approach can not only save workers time during their shift, it can also boost productivity immensely. For example, if an employee doesn’t know how to use a specific piece of equipment, that can slow down their tasks. However, if they are already trained on it, they can work towards their targets a lot faster.

3.    Make communication a priority

Communication is the key to success, as they say, and that is true in a warehouse setting as well. In addition to onboarding and training, you also have to clearly communicate expected targets, company policies, key performance indicators, and more.

Through regular meetings and documented processes, you can ensure your employees are always in the know. This will help them save time while on shift. With poor communication standards, employees may be left guessing, which can cause critical errors and slow down production.

4.    Run regular audits for all areas of the warehouse

How will you know your warehouse is efficient if you don’t measure efficiency? While looking at company targets is one key performance indictor, you will likely have others which you should be paying attention to as well. For example, are you auditing overtime, break time, spoiled inventory, and more?

Conducting regular audits and reviewing key performance indicators on a frequent basis will help you determine how likely you are to hit your long-term targets. If you’re constantly having to approve overtime, for example, it could mean your staff are inefficient. It could also mean you have to improve your training and onboarding procedures and communication policies. Audits can help you uncover this information.

5.    Introduce incentive pay

It goes without saying that warehouse employees, including temporary and seasonal workers, deserve fair pay. Now, if you want to further incentivize your staff to increase efficiency, offering bonuses or other financial awards is a great idea. Whether you’re giving them cash, paid time off, gift cards, free products, or something else, financial incentives work.

Employees appreciate being recognized for going above and beyond, especially during busy times when they are having to work faster and harder in order to reach company targets. Incentive pay can also build loyalty and improve employee retention, creating a workforce that is invested in the success of the company.

6.    Ask for employee ideas

Often, employers are not able to see the nitty gritty details that the warehouse staff is privy to. Ask your team for feedback on ways they think you could improve processes or tasks in order to increase efficiency. It’s likely you will be met with many ideas you would never have come up with yourself.

You employees are an excellent resource for ways to boost productivity because they experience efficiency slowdowns on a regular basis. They can often tell which processes are ineffectively designed or where certain areas require more staff members. Be sure to offer financial rewards for employee ideas that you implement in the warehouse.

7.    Cross-train your staff

Having highly specialized staff can be a great way to increase efficiency in some organizations, but that only works if you have large teams. For most warehouses and factories, it’s important to cross-train staff instead so they can perform many different functions on any given shift.

This way, if some employees need to take time off, you have others who can step in on a moment’s notice and ensure that productivity remains on target. With a highly specialized staff, you may end up with labor gaps if people go on leave unexpectedly.

You need to build the best team for your warehouse in order to improve efficiency

If you’re looking to increase efficiency in your warehouse operations, you have to start with the right people on your team. Get in touch with Noble Human Resources Solutions and tell us what type of employees you are looking for. Just fill out this short form with your contact information, and we’ll reach out to discuss your needs.