No matter how effectively you manage inventory, or what your warehouse manages and stocks, there’s one thing that is always going to be present: labor costs.

The human element will never truly be removed or reduced in the workplace, at least not in our lifetimes, and no matter how important your workforce is to your operations it will be a constant cost and expense for your warehouse.

Fear not, though! There’s ways to optimize efficiency and reduce labor costs without having to do a lot of extra hiring or having to reduce your employee count, all of which will help your overall effectiveness.

Keep Your Employees Trained

It may sound obvious, but you’d be surprised how much labor cost can be reduced by training the staff you have instead of hiring new workers. Employees with adequate training can perform more tasks, fit more roles, and use more equipment, thus increasing the effectiveness of your operations and removing the need to hire new workers to meet different needs.

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Sure, this is an old cliche, but it’s stuck around for a reason. Train your current staff on things like smart equipment usage, faster communication methods, and cost control related to damaged goods and wasted time to help everyone work a little faster and more effectively. And if your employees have suggestions on how to reduce the amount of time a task takes, hear them out – they’re the ones on the floor, after all.

Provide The Needed Equipment

It’s hard for work to get done if your workers don’t have the supplies they need, and this can start to lead to increased costs and lost productivity. Talk to your workers to see what would help them best, from additional forklifts to better industrial storage solutions to automated reporting systems to help them get their work done faster and reduce the need for additional hiring somewhere along the line.

Increase Safety and Prevent Injuries

Injured workers are a huge loss for everyone: the worker loses out on their full wages, you may have to pay for their disability until they can come back to work, and depending on the severity of the injury you might also have to pay for an extra temp worker to take their place in the meantime. Taking a few steps around the warehouse to increase worker safety and prevent injury, strain, and repetition will save you a lot more in the long run.