The human touch is still important

THERE HAS been much discussion about the drive for warehouse automation and how increased automated systems will only enhance the employee experience. We know that our future warehouses will contain working environments which will be enriched and enhanced through the deployment of collaborative robots who will remove all the elements of boring, repetitive activity required to fulfil a role. However, we forget the role of humans at our peril.

There is no doubt that people will still be present in automated facilities for the foreseeable future, performing tasks that robots cannot yet handle. While these roles may gradually diminish as technology advances and wage rates rise, thus creating an acceptable ROI, there will still be a need for human roles for the life of the facility. Attracting and retaining these workers will become increasingly challenging for organisations.

Over the course of my career, I have visited a large number of automated facilities, and in a very high proportion of cases the human environment has not been a major factor when the solution has been developed. Suppliers and businesses invest large sums of R&D budgets to deliver the optimum system performance, however, investment in the human environment is generally lower in the investment priority list. 

During design, picking workstations are refined to maximise picking efficiency, and workstation heights are made to be adjustable to further improve potential pick rates and enhance employee satisfaction. The buffers used to feed the storage totes to the worker are of a client specific calculated size to help ensure that work is available to the operator, tote transfer mechanisms are lightning fast to remove the old tote and present the new one in the blink of an eye, and Lux levels and decibel readings are always within the industry standards. 

All of this is essential for the project; it helps deliver super-fast processing times and great capital returns for the business, however, the humans who are operating these stations also need to be considered within the overall calculation. 

Picking for a prolonged period can be tough. I know this because I picked clothing for a well-known high-street retailer for around 18 months at the start of my career. Whilst the work was not mentally challenging, spending eight hours walking extensively around manual picking floors, occasionally receiving hurried directives from the desk controller, made for a less-than-ideal working environment.

Managers would often come onto the floor to prove that the target picking rates were possible; doing one or two picks and then leaving again after hitting the rates. Hardly a representative picture of the task in hand, however, this proved in their eyes that the targets were achievable.

The thing that made the job enjoyable, and any job to that matter, was the people I worked with. My fellow pickers who kept me motivated throughout the shift as we raced around the picking floors trying to achieve our rates.

In these automated environments, workstations are super-fast and super-efficient, but lack the stimulation needed by an operator to remain rewarded and fulfilled in their role. Gamification elements are being added to the workstation GUI’s, which allow workers to compete with fellow pickers to see who can pick or pack the fastest, and if you are lucky this will result in performance-based pay enhancements for your efforts.

The reality is that most modern workstations within warehouses can be lonely and isolated, with operator performance continuously monitored so any element of downtime can be acted upon. With Mental Health related workplace absence on the rise, according to statistics from the Health and Safety Executive, creating a more nurturing working environment could be beneficial to your staff and help reduce lost working days. 

Although noise levels comply with industry regulations, they may not be ideal for a 12-hour shift. High noise levels significantly impair performance in any working environment. Suppliers invest hundreds of thousands of pounds on optimised, automated workstations, however, sound dampening or other elements to really make the environment more employee focused are often not included. 

If operatives are going to be working in isolation with limited opportunity for social engagement, then organisations should consider how the physical environment could be enhanced to make it as nice as possible to be in. Surround the workstation with noise dampening material, enclose it in a room so the environmental conditions can be managed. Provide localised music connectivity so they can link their own personal device to the system and listen to the music they like or provide the ability to converse with other pickers via headsets as seen in many Retail environments. Supply the room with air-conditioning to ensure the workspace doesn’t overheat during the summer or get chilly in the winter. These kinds of environmental controls are standard for office workers but are deemed a luxury for a warehouse operative. 

As with all investment, the hardest part of this journey is justifying the CapEx to your investment board. Developing a tangible benefits case based on employee engagement and happiness is going to be difficult as there are many other factors that can influence staff turnover outside of the physical environment. Studies vary wildly in their valuation of this number, however, with the lower end being 25% of the total cost to employ, National Living Wage increasing by 7.36% on average since its introduction in 2016, and warehouse labour turnover rates quoted at 37%, it wouldn’t take much of a reduction in turnover to help justify the investment.

Building an employee focused warehouse isn’t necessarily an easy thing to do, however when developing your new facility there is an opportunity to rethink your approach to the employee environment. When designing a facility, you go through a comprehensive and rigorous design journey with your supplier. This relationship does not end when the design is completed, it continues through detailed design, installation, commissioning, testing, go-live and through to on-going live support via a long-term service agreement. 

When designing your employee environment perhaps the same comprehensive design rigour should be adopted. This then needs to be supported with a Long Term Service Agreement where you continuously re-evaluate and invest in your employee environment to help them to continue to perform at an optimal level. If you invest and engage correctly, your humans could be around longer than your equipment if you play your cards right. The additional costs for most of these changes are relatively small in comparison with the overall investment, and against the potential costs for retention, recruitment, absence etc, it actually does make for a good business case.

The author is Tristan Holiday, Senior Manager at independent management and technology consulting firm, BearingPoint. Tristan has spent 25 years working across a variety of businesses, specialising in Warehouse Design, Automation and Continuous Improvement. Alongside his projects background, he has spent 7 years in operational management roles leading a large-scale automated facility within the FMCG sector. For BearingPoint, he works for the Operations team specialising in supply chain solutions with a focus on automation.