Remember who you are and what you stand for and have fun “storming the castle.”
Thought leadership is all about understanding what has made you successful in the past, what is currently working for you now, and what new ideas have the potential to improve your business. It’s the process of becoming that “go-to” person in a field. Thought leadership means being at the forefront of the industry.
One of the most iconic film sequences from the last century shows Rocky training for his fight with Apollo Creed. Some of Rocky’s training includes running past burning trash cans, punching the air while holding bricks, and hitting frozen pig carcasses in a walk-in freezer. Finally, a chorus swells, and Rocky runs up the steps in front of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, making man’s most ancient, fake-it-till-you-make-it power pose, the “classic contrapposto”.
Similar to Rocky, your contingent workers learn and grow from the experience they receive in your warehouses or on your production line. With an all-time-high national turnover rate, ensuring such experience stays in your warehouse is essential to remaining profitable. One of the biggest issues facing companies that use outsourced labor is the problem of the “training ground.” It goes something like this…
Legendary leadership coach Ken Blanchard claims that while “in the past a leader was a boss… today’s leaders must be partners with their people… they no longer can lead solely based on positional power.”
In order to be successful with a large contingent workforce, managers must be partners with their laborers, not bosses.
Turnover and retraining are expensive. Your human capital is the most expensive machine on your floor. Workers’ productivity can drastically change based on their emotional state. They’re incredibly expensive to replace.
If your 3PL is outsourcing its labor needs to staffing agencies, the truth is you’re losing money unnecessarily. The experts at Smart Solutions can show you exactly how, but before you talk to them, I want you to consider an analogy:
Every New Year’s, my family breaks out a jigsaw puzzle, something large enough to take up the living room table, with enough pieces to keep us occupied for a few hours. Once, as a kid, I got stuck in an area of the puzzle where the picture was all the same color, all blue sky.
The world of the 3PL is dynamic. Employment needs fluctuate week-to-week, even day-to-day with spikes and dips in client orders.
All that variation translates directly to outsourced labor needs, but have those needs actually been getting filled from the staffing agencies you’re paying to do the job? In other words, is what you need the same as what you’re getting?
Here’s a not-so-secret secret for your 3rd-Party Logistics Company: there will always come a point in business where you have to take what you can get.
That goes for the rest of life, too, like when you’re at your favorite restaurant and you try to order the fish but they’re out of fish so now you have to choose between beef or chicken even though you’re sure the table next to you ordered fish and really how likely is it that they took the very last fish in the place and—you know what, let’s just stick to your business.
David Newman was an executive at a prominent staffing agency for ten years before he joined Smart Solutions. During those years he worked to improve their recruiting and placement process, their relationships with clients, and the general culture of the staffing industry. By the time he was ready to leave he had come to one conclusion:
Staffing agencies have failed.
The Path to High Profits doesn’t require Genius
Albert Einstein never said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” I guess that’s just what happens when you’re the smartest person on the planet; wise sayings stick to you like doctorates and Nobel prizes.
The quote first appeared in 1981, published in a document by Narcotics Anonymous, and targeted to help those with narcotics addictions realize they can’t continue using and expecting to be able to stop when they want.
Is your business seaworthy?
I’m not treading new waters when I compare your business to a sailing ship. But you don’t mind, do you? You’re the captain of your ship, the skipper. You can’t help but smile that one time a week one of your employees says “aye aye” when you give out an assignment. This is your boat.
How do you know if your boat has a hole?