Photo: Hannes Egler
We have something against standing still.
The acute shortage of staff in the logistics industry is due not least to a lack of flexibility in the company. The demand for individualization of working hours, for example for childcare or caring for relatives, can be met with professional tour optimization. Planning tours with different durations and periods of use can be an efficient means of attracting and retaining employees.
With all of the difficulties involved in distributing goods, the time available is only, well, a minor aspect. It is fixed - in the company and in the corresponding legal text.
An employee may work a maximum of 6 hours without a break, the average daily working time may not be more than 8 hours a day and 2 consecutive working times must be interrupted by at least an 11-hour break. There are also dozens of exceptions for drivers, medical staff and and and ...
Staff shortages are becoming a problem
In many conversations with customers, we learn that a significant everyday problem is the lack of staff. Not only for vehicles that weigh over 3.5 tonnes and can therefore only be driven by a driver who has a class C / C1E driver's license and who has passed the regular tests for key number 95. Many of our customers also use sprinters, caddies or related vehicles, vehicles that are generally allowed to be driven by anyone with a driver's license.
A small approach: route planning allows more flexibility
The recruitment of employees depends more and more on so-called soft facts, i.e. decision-making criteria that are difficult to influence because they have to do with emotions and taste. Or with the respective life situation. How does someone behave who cannot or is not allowed to work 8 hours a day? How many of these people are not employed because of this? If you think about it, this group of potential employees is so large that it shouldn't be neglected.
When we plan tours for our customers, we usually do so with the absolute focus on efficiency. But we can plan tours with TransIT and give the customer exactly how long the tour duration should be. The separated father, who only wants to work 6 hours a day every two weeks so that he can take his child to kindergarten or school and pick it up again, can only work 30 hours a week every two weeks. These parameters for calculating the operating times are easy to calculate for a route planning software.
Photo: rawpixel
Our software provides more flexibility in deployment planning.
Individualization and work-life balance
There is an ever increasing individualization of living conditions, but the employer can rarely react to it. People whose daily work is only forced because the living situation naturally requires an income should be able to offer an employment model that also gives them free time.
How about 5 employees who do the job of four, but are happy and satisfied because of the flexibility they have gained? How about early retirees who only want to work in the mornings from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. because they have to look after their partner? Or with the student who would like to work 3 hours a day before lectures? If you plan the labor of these people according to their needs, productivity still arises. The bread, apples or any other kind of goods still arrive where they belong: to the customer. From a company perspective, it is certainly not optimal to replace a 160-hour worker with 3 part-time workers. But if I can otherwise no longer occupy the 160 hours, but my customers demand (service) performance, I will come to the end.
Tailor-made deployment planning through route optimisation
TransIT can be your means to achieve growth despite the lack of staff. Because with TransIT you can plan and optimize your tours so that your employees are deployed according to their own ideas. You simply enter the maximum operating times as a filter and the route planning software automatically schedules the driver according to these times.
The added value is obvious:
The company can grow in terms of recruitment despite difficult conditions.
The company takes care of long-term customer loyalty.
The company creates jobs for people in special life situations.
The company creates a positive public image.
Because the company acts in this way, it also binds full-time employees to itself for longer, and conflicts are not immediately sought out.
The company can promote employee satisfaction, react to temporary, individual living conditions and also publish this.
TransIT can be the means to
achieve growth despite the
lack of employees.
Holger Sacher