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Well the 4th quarter of 2017 is coming to a close. Marty here with you at Warehouse and Operations as a Career. Your Company’s probably been busy this month with a lot going on. Many facilities may be not only closing the books on the month but have the quarterly reporting going on as well as the end of the year. For us on the floor, if our Fiscal year, or financial year is ending we are probably seeing asset list being made and Inventories being taken. I remember having to account for every pallet, battery, freezer suit, really everything we used in the warehouse. My Supervisor and manager would really stress over having the answers for the accountants and their bosses at the end of the year. And Inventory, or the counting of every box and case of product in the building, a time consuming endeavor to say the least. Your facility may actually shut down operations and solicit help from the salesforce and all the other departments to perform this yearly function. Even if your company utilizes a cycle count system, meaning every item is counted a specific number of times a year to keep inventory levels accurate at all times a total inventory may be requested around this time of year. Of course, as we in Operations know the product so well, not to mention every nook and cranny of the warehouse we’ll usually play a big part in the task. I guess it’s just a part of the job right, and may even provide us with a good amount of over time. For me the dread was always having to work with salesmen or the people from the other departments that knew nothing about the product or even how to count the ti’s and hi’s or pallets. Personally, I was glad when a full blown inventory was over, and we could get started on a new year.
Speaking of a new year it’s just about here isn’t it. The new year is a great time to reboot and catch that 2nd wind, kind of makes me reflect on the past year and welcome the new one in. Here at WAOC we’ve talked quite a bit of the importance of Goals in our Career’s, we’ve set several for ourselves this year, how’d you do, did we accomplish all we wanted too? Several of our listeners worked for and received that promotion, got noticed by their management teams and earned that raise they wanted or earned that next position. I’d like to think we all did a great job this year, let’s all pat ourselves on the back and give ourselves a big round of applause!
Seriously though, it is time to plan out next year now, if we want to make 5 grand more next year than we did this year that’s only $2.40 an hour we need to make at regular time this year, and we can somewhat control our wages so it’s guaranteed we can. Sounds strange doesn’t it, but I believe its factual, it’s up to us and we can do it!. Some of my favorite quotes:
https://www.ziglar.com/category/quotes/
Zig Ziglar, one of my favorites said “If you are not willing to learn, no one can help you. If you are determined to learn, no one can stop you.”
I saw this recently on Facebook, I think it came from The Vibrant Mind “When a flower doesn’t bloom you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” I know if I interject myself close to successful people It helps me make better decisions.
https://livelifehappy.com/life-quotes/when-a-flower-doesnt-bloom-you-fix-the-environment/
One that helps me almost daily is Don’t ruin a good today by thinking about a bad yesterday. Let it go. I think I found that a long time ago on lifeadvancer.com
One thing I worked hard on this year and is probably my strongest accomplishment is just keeping my mouth shut more often. I get in a lot of trouble by thinking something and it just rolling out of my mouth.
Oh and how can we talk about quotes and not mention a few from my favorite, Vince Lombardy:
http://www.vincelombardi.com/quotes.html
“Winning is not a sometime thing, it is an all the time thing. You don’t do things right once in a while…you do them right all the time.”
“Unless a man believes in himself and makes a total commitment to his career and puts everything he has into it – his mind, his body, his heart – what’s life worth to him?”
“The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”
I’ll put links to todays quotes in the show notes at warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com in case you’d like to look at others as well, I like looking them up, its fun and interesting to me.
I wouldn’t want to be the person to tell Vince Lombardy that I couldn’t make and additional $2.40 an hour next year, I don’t feel he had much patience for the word can’t or couldn’t.
Henry Ford left us with “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t—you’re right.” I myself tried to quit using the word can’t a long time ago.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/203714.Henry_Ford
This year at WAOC we talked of our responsibilities as employees, from researching where we wanted to work and who we wanted to work for to building our resumes, acing our interviews, being on time for our shifts everyday and learning to be among the best at our tasks and getting noticed by our management teams. We’ve talked a lot about participating in shift meetings and start up meetings and how they can put us on our managements radar. Putting all that to practice will earn us that additional $5000.00 next year, I’m certain, I know its possible.
So what are some of your goals for next year, write them out, put it on paper and keep it with you and I feel you’ll meet everyone of them. What position handles the case after you finish with it, does that pay more, want to do that job, let your supervisor know what you want to do and ask how you need to go about it! Want to operate that piece of equipment, will it pay us more, let your boss know your ready to take on more responsibility, it’ll happen. Another thing we’re learning is that taking on responsibility pay’s, the more responsibility we take on the more we’re likely to earn!
In my travels this month I encountered several, really too many stories where individuals had either backed off their goals or was just quitting their positions due to simply not communicating well. Now some promotions or positions just aren’t going to work out. Maybe we didn’t do enough research on what our duties were going to be or possibly the jobs duties weren’t explained correctly to us. Sometimes we reach our goal only to find it requires more hours, tasks or reasonability’s than what we’re comfortable with even. Or, if we had communicated our frustrations and challenges better, or at all even, we could find that our pain points could have been addressed and solutions could have been found. In two incidents that were shared with me the management teams we’re unaware of the young supervisor’s feelings and there were solutions available that could have been implemented and solved all their concerns. That’s of course not always the case but by communicating on the front side, when we’re hitting those walls, we’ll have the necessary information to make the right decisions with. Who knows, maybe both of these gentlemen could have gone right back to what they were doing originally.
Communicating is probably the hardest thing we do, I mean we come in each shift, get our case counts or production numbers and go straight to work, we’re there to get the job done. I think every guest we’ve had on the show has tried to stress to us the importance of communicating. We can’t confuse complaining with communicating though. We’ve talked about communication on several episodes and Rodrigo, Nathan and Nelson all has given us examples of how important that one word is to us on the floor. Let’s look it up again,
Communication: a process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communication
And Communicating: to convey knowledge of or information about : make known.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/communicating
I’ll put those links in todays show notes on the website to at warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com.
Lets remember we’re working to make money, do something we enjoy and turn that enjoyment into a career that we can retire from and that we control our success, not our bosses. I’ve veered off topic again, so where was I,
Ok, I was talking about how responsibility and how responsibility earns us more money.
When our task is cutting and cleaning a thousand linear feet of carpet at an hourly rate and the forklift position pay’s a bit more it’s because we’ll have a little more responsibility. Yes, a portion of that’s because we’re operating a piece of equipment and are responsible for it and the safety practices that comes with it but also we may be responsible for properly tagging it’s actual length, color etc or getting it to the correct slot or staging area to be loaded on the correct truck heading to the right convention!
An Order Selector might be paid a base rate, but if he or she selects above and beyond an amount per hour, with no errors, they may be incentized for it. Being responsible for the cases and no errors.
Same thing for moving into a lead or supervisor position, we’ll have more responsibilities and may be paid proportionally for them.
If we show up for our shift on time every day that we can, have a great attitude every day, not only follow the rules, processes and procedures but support them and encourage others too as well, we’re going to be noticed. Noticed by our managers. Add in participating in startup meetings and safety meetings, sharing with them that we want more, more responsibility and more money we will have the opportunity to increase our yearly earnings by at least that $5000.00 next year. I really believe it’s just that simple, I see it done every year.
We are responsible for our own success, and in our fields of warehousing, production, manufacturing, distribution and transportation or the world of Operations we can truly plan it out, implement that plan and reach every goal we set for ourselves.
Like I said earlier, I’m ready for the new year & all it’s bringing for me. We here at WAOC would love to hear from each of you, what are your goals and where is 2018 going to take you this year? Send us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com . If there’s any ideas or suggestions through our experiences and opinions that may point you in the right direction we’d be happy to share them. And don’t forget about our Facebook and Twitter feeds, use @whseandops to find us there and we’d appreciate the Likes and Follows very much. If your enjoying the show be sure to subscribe so, you’ll never miss an episode!
Until next week, I guess I can add until next year today, lets get those New Year goals written out and a plan in place to reach them & as always let’s put Safety first, personally and professionally, we all have many people counting on us out there!