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Welcome to Warehouse and Operations as a Career, I’m Marty, everyone having a prosperous and productive week? We’ve been discussing how there’s so many ways to break into the operations fields, all the different get our foot in the door positions and how we can target our employers or the companies we’d like to work with, capitalizing on our career goals. Something that came up this week was those gig apps out there. Something relatively new but you’ve probably heard someone talking about them. Basically, you download an app that employers post job assignments on. Usually for fill in or special assignment tasks that they need someone to work a day or two, maybe on something where little to no training is involved. They just have some things that need to get done. We’re seeing them branch out into general labor assignments now too. I think the warehousing industry is starting to recognize them, I know of a couple of facilities experimenting with them for Unloaders, pallet runners and even order selectors! Of course, as with anything new, it’ll take a while to collect enough data to see how efficient the program is going to work out, but it sounds like a good idea right? Last week we talked about the importance of part time positions, how they fit a lot of us, the employees needs and how profitable they can be for our employers as well. Maybe these gig assignments can carry those efficiencies to the next step?
While out and about, just checking in on different operations, I asked around a bit, just bringing the subject up in conversation with front line supervisors and leads. I did the same with the next level of management, managers, directors and vice presidents and surprisingly I received two different opinions on them. The front-line teams really saw no interest in them, at all, at first. Now it’s important we remember these are the guys and gals that are responsible for getting things done, the doors closed every day and all the training that goes along with a new boot on the floor. The first things I heard were concerns with productivity, errors and safety. Their question was how we are supposed to spent time on an orientation, going over all the safety procedures and company rules with an employee that is brought in knowing they are not looking for full time employment and may only be with us for a day or two. Valid points, but we’ll come back to that in a moment!
Now the managers, directors and vice presidents all found interest with the idea and wanted to know a little more about the different programs out there. And think about it, on the surface there’s quite a few pros with the idea. Something like this may be great for when an associate calls in sick, simply post to the app that you need someone for the day, a prescreened and qualified, task experienced person clicks accept and is at your facility within the hour! Or say you have a special assignment, something like moving some racking around or recalibrating the available cube with a lot of slots and just need someone to raise or lower a lot of cross bars. Post the job on the app and someone that has done that type of work before clicks accept and shows up for the shift the next day. Both scenarios we just mentioned are temporary needs. Wouldn’t the app be a great tool to have, and be more efficient than using a temp agency? And I heard quite a bit from them regarding cost, every one of them wanted to know more about how the billing worked, rates and wages, those kinds of things.
And what about us as employees? Well, we all need to work. Like we discussed last week we could have other responsibilities that prevent us from working a full-time job. Or sometimes we just need a little part time position to fill in too many off hours. Maybe we can only work on the weekends. These new gig jobs or app jobs may be perfect to fill those needs. Regarding the two examples we just talked about, let’s say the gentleman that called in sick with in the sanitation department. The ad is posted to the app and I have 5 years’ experience in warehouse sanitation and am only working 3 days a week at my regular job. I’m off today so I click accept, show up, perform the task and the day’s pay shows up in my account the following day. Or I’m between jobs right now and I see that you’re looking for someone to help unbolt, move and replace cross bars for a few days. I’ve done that before, so I hit accept on my phone and work for you until the task is complete! Sure, sounds like a win for us employees too to me.
So, like I said, this discussion came up last week and I wanted to learn a little more about it. I spoke a company utilizing the gigs in 4 different states and 6 cities. Some locations have seen great success while others do struggle a little bit. From what I gathered, and it makes perfect sense, is the region and location can really come into play when looking for experienced and available talent. If I’m posting for an experienced electric rider pallet jack operator to be a pallet runner in a town that only has 2 industrial facilities, there may not be a person with that experience that’s not working right now. Hence, they’ll be no one to accept my post!
I wanted to know how to apply so I asked a few questions. Pretty simple actually. All I’d have to do is build a profile in one of the many app’s out there, list my past work experiences, any equipment I’ve used before along with giving myself a grade on how proficient I was on it and give them a direct deposit routing number to an account to deposit my earnings into. I liked how I could even give them numbers to any non-conventional banking apps as well. It’s really like just filling out an application. Now someone is going to give us a call, an interview I guess you could say, really just to verify we can perform the task’s that we listed on our app. The kicker here is that our assignments will be rating us on how well we performed the tasks assigned to us. Which is great because if an employer is looking for someone through a post, I’m certain they’d choose a pallet runner with 5 stars using the equipment over someone with only 2 stars! Lesson 1 would be to be successful with the gigs we’ll need to be honest on the application. I spoke with 7 people that’s working the gigs and all of them have loved the experience. Everyone brought up the being paid the next day is a huge plus. A couple of them did get in a little over their heads, maybe exaggerating a little on their profile and immediately went back and fixed it. They all felt like you needed to do everything you can to keep at least a 4-star rating to get picked for assignments.
So, let’s go back to those concerns, very valid concerns, that our front-line leads, and supervisors had. One of their biggest concerns was training and safety, taking even half a shift training a gig employee on how to do the job. I mentioned how at first, they had no interest hearing about the programs. After pointing out how you wouldn’t necessarily post for all the positions in your facility, but how something like this may be the perfect fit for others most of them opened up a little bit. We need to remember these individuals aren’t actually new boots to warehousing. They know all the Safety regulations and how to perform the tasks in general. We will need to cover any company specific rules with them and yes, we need to give them an orientation to our building like evacuation routes, gathering areas, where the eye wash stations are and such but not necessarily a full-blown orientation to our company! We’ll be working beside them for a few days though and I feel we do have to make them feel welcomed. We brought them in because we needed them, and we should treat them with the same respect we do everyone else.
After speaking with companies utilizing these services and the employees using them for employment, I’m feeling pretty good about them, and I believe we’re going to see more and more of them pop up. Another great thing about them is we can give a prospective employer a test run, see how their organization is ran, maybe learn if we’d like to work for them on a permanent basis. I learned that 7 of the gig workers did receive full time offers and have taken positions with companies that had used them a few times. So, we’ll need to add these job service apps or gig work programs to our list of get our foot in the door positions!
Well, there’s a little on what I learned last week; you may know someone that should check them out. And if any of Ya’ll have worked through a service app before please send us an email to host@warehouseandoperationsasacareer.com and let us know how it worked out for you! If you’d like a little more info on gig work, start a feed on our Facebook or twitter pages where you can find us using @whseandops.
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Until next week, be prosperous, productive and please be Safe in all you do!