Employee Engagement in 2021 Through Labour Management Systems (LMS)

For any labour intensive company, managing their labour workforce has always been a difficult task. Companies are slowly opening up to the benefits of the Labour Management System to tide over the crisis ensued by the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the months before the onslaught of the pandemic, the unemployment levels were comparatively lower, and warehouse, logistics and distribution service providers were in need of additional labour workforce to meet the growth and expansion needs of their business.

However, all this changed dramatically post the COVID-19 outbreak. The ensuing lockdown led to a spike in unemployment across the world with labour-intensive companies getting affected the most for want of skilled workforce. A country like India faced major labour migrations due to the loss of their source of income and unemployment. For labour-intensive companies, this pandemic necessitated the need to bring in more automation and efficiency to enable operations to reach its full potential.

The answer to this crisis lies in the effective use of a Labour Management System (LMS). A Labour Management System helps companies evaluate and analyse their most vital resource — their workforce — and chalks out ways to increase the efficiency and productivity of their workforce in the post lockdown era. So, let us check out how a labour act management system can help warehouses, logistics and distribution services providers ramp up their operations under the new working rules post the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tracking the paradigm shift

The Labour Management System has observed a fundamental change in recent years. Earlier labour management was viewed from the punitive or disciplinary perspective — getting rid of or removing the dead weight or extra labour. Things have changed now. Today labour management is more about focusing on the overall performance of the company. Organisations are looking for innovative methods to improve or enhance their employee engagement instead of merely reporting and discussing employee performance. And this is a crucial aspect which will be nurtured further in the future.

For instance, companies can introduce innovative shift management through shift games and Fitbit contests and encourage workers to participate in friendly competition with their colleagues and peers. These activities are done to maintain the engagement levels of the workforce with the company. This helps maintain the high employee spirits, especially in this era, where finding and hiring skilled talent has become more difficult, and things will get even more trying as the world slowly emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies would need to be more creative than implementing a “carrot and stick” approach to motivate and inspire their labour force.

Many experts claim that LMS software has great potential; however, it remains to be the most underutilised option in labour management. A Labour Management System software will play a significant role in an organisation’s holistic “return to normalcy” post the COVID-19 pandemic. LMS, when served as a Cloud, pay-as-you-go, on-demand, and SaaS (software as a service) option, can automate the workforce management of the company without needing any massive in-premise hardware or software investments.

The emergence of niche applications

The labour workforce makes up for a large part of the operating budget of a typical warehouse. This is a good enough reason for more and more technology service providers to invest their resources in creating applications that will help companies mitigate their workforce challenges and decrease their costs.

This trend is already evident in many labour-intensive companies, where niche applications are being implemented to improve employee performance and enhance productivity. “Optimisation capability” and “Operation optimisation” are examples of niche applications to have recently emerged in the labour market that focus mainly on making employee performance as effective and efficient as possible.

These new applications incorporate AI, ML and different advanced applications to effectively monitor the number of orders picked, work rate and many other KPIs to determine the proper allotment of employees in specific work areas within the warehouse at a given time. These applications can also suggest ideal labour shifts to support the fulfilment requirements of the warehouse. This helps the companies provide a real-time response to different operational requirements.

Even today, it has been observed that warehouse managers use a walkie talkie to communicate their labour requirements at the warehouse. This leads to less efficiency, which hampers productivity. The LMS software will simply optimise these operations by efficiently managing the availability of labour force at the warehouse. The system will segregate and divide your labour force as per the requirements at different sections of the warehouse. This boosts efficiency and will fasten the conversion timings.

Creating flexible logistics management

As companies slowly emerge from the pandemic and the ensuing lockdown and are eager to resume options at full speed, they would have to find effective ways to adjust and adapt to the latest social distancing norms and other safety requirements to fight the pandemic.

An efficient Labour Management System will play an important role in this situation. They can effectively handle and manage the changes required at the workplace, including the one-metre social distancing rules and use of safety gear, right from the moment the employee enters the warehouse till the time they log out.

Companies are eagerly figuring out different effective ways to optimise labour productivity under the new working norms, where picking and delivering orders in the same timeframe is no longer feasible. Therefore, organisations that implement Labour Management Software or other related software applications will be more prepared to endure any unforeseen supply chain disruptions in the future.

Warehousing companies and other labour-intensive businesses have been affected a great deal due to this pandemic. While the true extent of the effects on businesses is still being calculated, it is clear that labour-intensive companies need adequate labour flexibility resources supported by an efficient Labour Management System to enable agile and dynamic operations in this pandemic era.