Why striking staff threaten supply chain success

The UK sup­ply chain was start­ing to make a recov­ery from Brex­it and Covid this sum­mer, only to be derailed by a series of strikes across indus­try.

The cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis has dri­ven indus­tri­al action by work­ers in the rail­ways, the Roy­al Mail and the UK’s largest port, Felixs­towe, over increas­ing­ly stretched pay pack­ets. 

The logis­tics sec­tor, high­ly praised for con­tin­u­ing to ful­fil deliv­er­ies through­out the pan­dem­ic, has also been a hotbed of dis­sat­is­fac­tion, with DHL dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tre work­ers in Scot­land vot­ing to walk out. Ama­zon work­ers in Tilbury have staged a protest over work­ing con­di­tions and pay, while HGV dri­vers at dairy firm Muller have gone on strike in protest against imposed rota changes.

These con­cerns in the logis­tics sec­tor are not new. A City and Guilds report ear­li­er this year said the sec­tor is like­ly to have work­er short­ages of 400,000 by 2026 because of low pay and unat­trac­tive work­ing con­di­tions.

It found that only 23% of peo­ple said they would con­sid­er a job in logis­tics with 8% say­ing they were will­ing to dri­ve an HGV. There have been reports of ware­house staff employed on inse­cure, zero-hour con­tracts, sub­ject to fir­ing and re-hir­ing on less favourable terms and even claims of timed toi­let breaks. 

As a result, accord­ing to the 2021 Stress & Men­tal Health study, up to 27% of employ­ees in the trans­port and logis­tics sec­tor had tak­en time off work for men­tal health rea­sons. 

When it comes to pay, accord­ing to Sta­tista, the medi­an annu­al full-time wage for trans­port and stor­age work­ers in the UK in 2021 was £31,000. This is com­pared with the top sec­tor – finan­cial ser­vices at £43,000 and the low­est of £20,000 in food ser­vice. 

Wouter Sati­jn, sales direc­tor at mate­ri­als han­dling group Jolo­da Hydraroll, says: “Lor­ry dri­ving, and work­ing in logis­tics in gen­er­al, is a demand­ing pro­fes­sion. It’s very phys­i­cal and dri­vers are under pres­sure to deliv­er goods to their des­ti­na­tion with­in the allot­ted trav­el time. Who wants to work in a cold, damp and poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous unload­ing bay?”

So, what can be done to improve staff engage­ment and well­be­ing in the sec­tor, retain and attract tal­ent and tough­en up the sup­ply chain?

High­er pay is an obvi­ous solu­tion. Logis­tics UK stat­ed that HGV dri­ver wages rose 12% in the year to Jan­u­ary 2022, part­ly due to short­ages. Aldi has agreed a wage increase of up to 9% for work­ers in its UK region­al dis­tri­b­u­tion cen­tres. And the union Unite recent­ly helped to secure a 12% pay rise for Sainsbury’s HGV dri­vers in Bas­ingstoke. 

North-east-based Moody Logis­tics and Stor­age has dou­bled the usu­al reward per­cent­age from its prof­it-relat­ed pay scheme for employ­ees. “We’ve recog­nised the cost-of-liv­ing issue and want to ensure our staff are not dis­grun­tled,” says man­ag­ing direc­tor Car­o­line Moody.

It is only part of a raft of staff ben­e­fits the com­pa­ny offers, such as a min­i­mum of 28 days of paid annu­al leave, an auto-enrol­ment pen­sion scheme, health care and com­pa­ny uni­forms. 

“We are try­ing to be a fam­i­ly busi­ness, not just by name but by nature too,” says Moody. “We also have annu­al com­pa­ny awards and lit­tle things such as buy­ing each mem­ber of staff a fam­i­ly bar­be­cue pack the Fri­day before last year’s May bank hol­i­day. All of these mea­sures com­bine to help with our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and reten­tion fig­ures. I can’t remem­ber the last time we lost a mem­ber of staff.”

Despite this suc­cess, it’s clear that rewards, like pay, are still not enough to keep all logis­tics staff hap­py. When the Ama­zon walk­out was tak­ing place the organ­i­sa­tion high­light­ed its offer­ing of pri­vate med­ical insur­ance, life assur­ance, income pro­tec­tion, sub­sidised meals and a com­pa­ny pen­sion plan.

Suzanne Mar­shall, head of clin­i­cal strat­e­gy at well­be­ing experts Good­Shape, isn’t sur­prised that some staff remain unhap­py. She says com­pa­nies need to be care­ful that they don’t offer ben­e­fits which aren’t address­ing the right prob­lems. 

“Times are tough. Crip­pling staff short­ages in the sec­tor and spi­ralling liv­ing costs are adding pres­sure to every­one and while a drinks fridge in a break­out room might be a nice perk, it isn’t going to improve well­be­ing or staff reten­tion,” she says.

Instead, Mar­shall urges a clear­er focus on address­ing oper­a­tional issues such as the sector’s work­ing pat­terns. 

“Logis­tics typ­i­cal­ly has high lev­els of staff work­ing remote­ly on shift pat­terns. This adds chal­lenges when it comes to com­mu­ni­cat­ing and under­stand­ing the issues and bar­ri­ers to well­be­ing,” she says. “One logis­tics com­pa­ny we worked with was see­ing high­er lev­els of absence in one shift. By unpick­ing their data and insights they estab­lished that not enough time was being giv­en for dri­vers to hand over to the next mem­ber of staff. This result­ed in insuf­fi­cient time for dri­vers to adjust their chair posi­tion and sub­se­quent­ly a high­er lev­el of mus­cu­loskele­tal-relat­ed absences. Logis­tics firms need a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the cause of staff absences so they can pro­vide bet­ter sup­port.”

Akshatha Veeren­dra is prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant, ener­gy, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and well­ness at RPS Group. She says that logis­tics firms, inspired by the pan­dem­ic, are try­ing to improve employ­ee expe­ri­ences by reimag­in­ing ware­house design.

This includes sites with more nat­ur­al light, green path­ways and even run­ning tracks on roofs. It means more space aid­ing health and safe­ty among the fork­lifts and pal­lets, as well as med­i­ta­tion and train­ing zones.

“We’re see­ing com­pe­ti­tion between com­pa­nies look­ing to devel­op the best sites to increase employ­ee engage­ment, reduce absences and missed deliv­er­ies but also meet ESG require­ments,” explains Veeren­dra. 

Sati­jn calls on logis­tics firms to also invest in ware­house and logis­tics automa­tion to help up-skill staff to more added-val­ue roles. “Automat­ing the ware­house is an essen­tial next step to gain­ing effi­cien­cies that will also pos­i­tive­ly impact dri­ver sat­is­fac­tion and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” he states. “As employ­ers, we always com­plain we can’t find the right peo­ple, but you have to look after them in the right way. If we don’t move at a high­er and faster pace, it will mean more emp­ty shelves in our stores and a big impact on every­day life.”

But Moody says it can be hard for logis­tics firms to find the time and finan­cial head­room to make the nec­es­sary changes. “When you’re in a good posi­tion and mak­ing mon­ey, you can afford to do these things. It then becomes self-ful­fill­ing with bet­ter engage­ment and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” she says. “With a lot of hauliers, it is about mak­ing that ini­tial step.”

Veeren­dra agrees that change will take time. “We’re see­ing improve­ments but it is slow. There needs to be a cul­tur­al shift in the sec­tor through­out the sup­ply chain around engage­ment and well­be­ing.”