Safety. Insurance. Payroll. Hiring and firing. Managing people.
Warehouses and distribution centers have a lot of labor management priorities.
Partnering with Costa Solutions taught me that a full-service third-party supply chain labor partner can drive some of the largest cost-savings possible with my warehouse and distribution centers. Labor cost per unit handled is a key performance indicator for an outsourced labor provider like Costa. But a leaner budget isn’t the only benefit. Partnering with Costa also means freeing your team up to focus on higher-level strategy and development.
Does your temp agency do that?
A couple of other big considerations outside of long-term savings are protection from liability and having a more flexible workforce. Let’s look at each.
Liability Dangers
Costa can shift insurance and risk mitigation costs away from your business. An outsourced labor management partner should be responsible for these staffing problems:
- personal injury
- product shrinkage
- damages
- compliance
If you aren’t thinking about liability, you should be. Last year, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled that waste management company Browning-Ferris should bear equal responsibility for unfair treatment of contingent workers provided by a third-party staffing firm.
Similar rulings and judgments under co-employment laws have burned even major players like Walmart and Microsoft. So don’t assume you are safe.
The business environment is not getting any easier, and that’s where the value of working with a full-service third-party supply chain labor partner like Costa Solutions comes in. They can navigate and avoid these pitfalls.
Inefficient Staffing
Costa can help your employees do more. Outsourced labor is a good way for warehouses to meet deadlines while freeing in-house staff to focus on higher priority or otherwise understaffed business areas.
Costa can eliminate the expense of under- or overstaffing. They have the people you need, when you need them. And when there isn’t work to do, they pull our people back and allocate them elsewhere. You aren’t paying for anyone’s idle time any longer.
Along those lines … Did you know 35% of labor spend in the warehousing sector goes toward non-productive time? How can an outsourced full-service labor management partner help change this?
Here’s how: From the time inbound freight hits the dock until the job is done, Costa will take custody of the product until it’s unloaded, checked, tagged, re-palletized, and prepared to your standards.
During down time, their workers can perform additional agreed-upon services. If they aren’t working, they won’t be on the job site. Period.
Costa doesn’t just load and unload your trucks. Additional services include:
- Dock scheduling
- Freight hauling
- Product put-away
- Stocking/replenishment
- Shipment verification and documentation
- Time-stamped loads/orders
- Analysis of load/order time breakdowns
- Selecting
- Labeling
- Packaging
- Auditing
- Product checking
- Freight configuration and prep
As your business partner, Costa can provide any and every warehouse service needed to keep your operations running smoothly, including:
- Sanitation/janitorial services
- Pallet sorting and management
- Tote sorting
- Corrugated bailing and recycling
- Truck check-in/check-out
- Security
- Trailer striping
- Salvage returns
- Trailer washing/spotting/inventory
- Parking lot striping and maintenance
I’m confident that once you calculate the ROI, you’ll be convinced that Costa brings you two benefits: long-term financial gains and long-term productivity gains. Protection from liability risk and inflexible staffing are only part of the picture.
Take a moment to download this free whitepaper, A Roadmap for Warehouse Excellence. After you read it, click “Contact Us For a Free Assessment” at the top of this page. Costa has a solution for you!