Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:23 — 10.7MB)
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS
Anyone every felt like they’ve missed an opportunity? Anyone ever realized they did miss an opportunity? I think more often than not we only feel like that or notice it after the fact! Welcome back to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty, lets talk about opportunities for a minute today. Not necessarily missed opportunities, what’d you call it, let’s say recognizing an opportunity, I think. Maybe I’ve been thinking about opportunities all day because I’ve been with Recruiters and candidates all week. I really enjoy the whole recruiting process, and I so enjoy getting to visit with all the applicants, hearing about their work experiences, their goals and how their planning on reaching them, or, in some cases helping them realize they need that plan. Anyway, I wanted to talk about WMS or our warehouse management systems today and while I was putting those thoughts together, I realized a good WMS, or really any management system will provide us with so many opportunities and we’re probably going to miss them. I realized, and I think it just hit me today, that anytime we’re learning something new, something we’ve never done before or performing a task differently than we did in the past, we’re being led right into a new opportunity! What we do with it will depend on how we react to it. This morning when I woke up, I’m one of those really early risers, I got to learn something before I get my day started. So, I was checking Flipboard on the phone, just checking out a few articles and noticed a daily reminder from Cindy B Brown of the Unlocking the secret to living rich podcast. She has this little daily reminder thing she post each day, anyway, todays were a little .gif that said You must make a Choice to take a Chance or your life will never Change. With me working with so many job seekers this week it got me to thinking about it. Seeking employment, isn’t that what we’re doing, making a choice, taking a chance to change right? So, before I stray to far off subject, lets talk about the opportunities a WMS can bring us. Wither we’re an order selector, fork driver, sanitation or General Labor or Utility person, shoot, any position in the warehouse, a WMS system is going to change something about our job! The old way of doing something was set up by someone else, I guess it worked great because we’ve always done it that way! But now, with other things changing all around us, we can have the opportunity to do it differently or do something else entirely!
I set in on an interview this week, the applicant had applied for a reach lift position with a company about 13 miles from where he stayed. The recruiter felt like, because of the traffic, that might be a little far for him to drive for a job. The gentleman was working for a company like 10 miles from his house, but all the traffic was going the other way. When I’d heard about his experience, and he was really an experienced lift driver, I asked him why he’d left his old position? He replied that the company was installing a WMS system and we all know how they mess everything up! Now, he’d been with his present company for 6 years. I asked him where had he worked before that used a system and what kind was it, directed, inventory, RF driven, how computer driven was it? He replied he’d never worked with one. I asked him why did he think they were a bad thing then, where’d you hear all the negative things about them? The answer was that everything worked fine like it was, it was only going to slow him down, all that scanning and stuff, and I’m paid an incentive by the pallet, I have to keep moving! So, I told them I wasn’t going to do it. Even after I explained that in my experience a good WMS has always increased our productivity and shared how I’ve always found them to be a positive thing, he had no interest in listening. And that’s perfectly fine, for a little longer, until every warehouse is connected and directed. Anyway, I felt like he missed an opportunity there, but he almost missed a second one when he was interviewing. He had a great resume, it listed everything he’d done with this company. He’d started as an unloader on the inbound side, moved to running pallets and the to the reach lift. He’d taken several lift courses and safety courses that’d been offered through the company and he’d done some volunteer work as well as a couple of community college courses. He only listed one other employer, he’d been there for 4 years as a pallet runner and had references for both jobs.
Through our talking about his stable work history and being employed for the last 10 years with only 2 organizations I found out that he also had about 3 years operating a cherry picker or order picker. Wow, how could he have left off any equipment experience! The recruiter had a position 7 miles from his house looking for an experienced cherry picker operator and it paid over a dollar more an hour than the position he had came in for! Normally, listing our last 10 years of employment, in our industry anyway, is enough, especially if we’ve only worked for 2 companies, but we need to list all our accomplishments. Not just any classes or certificates we possess but any computer programs and equipment we have experience with! This one gentleman had, or nearly had, just missed 2 opportunities in the last 24 hours!
I think his first missed opportunity bothered me the most. Ladies and gentlemen, change is going to happen. I don’t think we can ever look at it in a negative way, in our work lives anyway. It’s been decided, it’s happening, wither it works or not, we need to give it our best. If it doesn’t work for whatever reason I assure you that we’re going to go through change again. Our company is going to be successful and we should be a part of that success! As employees, we shouldn’t dig our heels in on an issue. I wish he had done a little research on WMS systems and asked some questions, even if they were questions about how his pay may be affected. Learned a little about it before quitting and throwing away 6 years with a company he seemed to enjoy before they made a few changes! I’m so glad he brought up his other experiences during my talks with him. He got a great new job, closer by where he lived and at a better pay rate. I was glad that didn’t turn into a missed opportunity for him.
Another story I witnessed this week was, and this one really made me sick because the next day the young gentleman wanted to know if he could come back. So, a young man, he had just graduated from high school, I think he’d worked at a fast food place before, anyway he had applied for what was listed as an Unloader/Receiver position. First, I so dislike it when a company creates a position with two separate functions. I think, and of course that doesn’t matter what I think, but I think hiring agents should list advertisements as one position. If we’re going to be doing something else, say 30% of the time it should just be put in our job description. Anyway, the recruiter explained that they were a company from out of state and had just built their 2nd distribution facility in Texas, it wasn’t really open or shipping just yet, but they were in the gearing up process. Now this facility is about 400K sq feet, a well-established organization that’s growing by leaps and bounds. A great get your foot in the door opportunity. So the recruiter explained that right now everyone was kind of doing what ever asked, some days they had several trucks come in and he would be unloading most of the day and the receiving supervisor would be training him on the inventory system while other days there could be only a few inbound loads to work. On those days he may be doing something in production, maybe even sanitation, but once they were up and running his duties would be unloading and receiving the product.
Well, the young man worked for 3 days and he walked out at lunch on the 4th day. When contacted for his exit interview later that afternoon he stated he quit because everything was so disorganized, he’d be moved around to different jobs every day. The recruiter politely reminded him that they had discussed that. The opportunity was being one of the first associates hired and he’d have the chance to know a little about how the warehouse ran as a whole. She shared with him that his supervisor had really liked him and had already expressed that he’d probably be a good leadman as they started hiring more employees. She thanked him, said she was sorry it didn’t work out and wished him the best. He thanked her and said it just wasn’t for him he guessed. After he thought about it that night, I guess he realized maybe it wasn’t so bad and called to say he’d come on back in. Now, this was his first real job, so maybe he was unaware that’s not how things really work. He was informed by HR that he had abandoned his position and was not eligible for rehire right now. I’m not sure why, but this young gentleman was just crushed. I think he honestly thought they would let him come back to work. This one was really a missed Opportunity.
Here at WAOC we talk a lot about our responsibilities as an employee. Of course, throughout our careers we’re going to need the help of others, our bosses or a mentor, and we’ll find people along the way to help us along. But the brunt of the responsibility, as it pertains to our growth, success, advancement and keeping our jobs truly lies with us, its all on our shoulders. We have to hold ourselves responsible for our own job! I think part of those responsibilities are teaching ourselves how to recognize opportunity. We have to slow down, not get upset about something changing, either system wise or a task within our position. If we slow down, think things through, its easy to seek out any answers we need to understand a new system or speak with our boss about all the duties we’re doing. I’m going to say again, no matter what job we have or what industry we work in the one thing we have to be open to and good at is Communication! We did a whole episode on communication last year. It’s one of the few short cuts in the workplace. The better we are at it the farther it’ll take us!
Look for Opportunities, there around us all day every day! Well, there’s a few thoughts for this week, send us a topic you’d like to discuss, shoot us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com, or just bring it up on facebook or twitter using @whseandops and we’ll join in on the discussion! Until next week, capitalize on every opportunity you see, and see every opportunity that presents itself. Have a Safe week and keep your workplace Safe for your Team!