There’s not a day goes by when the logistics industry releases news about their ambitions to adopt labour saving technologies in warehouses.
Similarly, vendors are creating cutting edge solutions including AMR’s, Robots and even CoBots with the same intent to reduce the reliance on manual labour thereby meeting the needs of their customers.
Research company Gartner predicts by 2027 over 75% of companies will have adopted some form of cyber-physical automation within their warehouse operations.
There’s good business sense behind why this happening, employing people is expensive with costs almost guaranteed to increase annually but with no certainty of a corresponding increase in output.
In the UK, with a recently elected Labour Party in Government there is an expectation that the rights of employees will increase. The Labour Party trailed a number of initiatives in its Green Paper published in 2021, whilst in Opposition, which has subsequently been revised but clearly their intentions are to improve the lot of the working person, which may come at a cost to business.
The National Minimum Wage increase has been confirmed to be increasing by 6.7% to £12.21 per hour from April 2025.
This 6.7% rise would represent a sizeable increase and out paces the current rate of inflation.
Paying people a fair wage for their work is entirely right and proper. Having the minimum wage rate set by government makes it a level playing field for all employers in the UK but hikes in rates over which employers have no influence or control does help make the case for alternatives to be pursued.
The adoption of established and emerging technologies has never been faster than it is today in the UK and wider Europe.
Elon Musk has just revealed his robot ‘Optimus’ which he suggests will have both industrial and domestic applications.
The world is moving very quickly.
Where does this leave today’s warehouse employees?
Listening to all this emerging technology can be dispiriting for this group of people particularly when it is being made plain the purpose of the new technologies is to essentially reduce the reliance on them.
The future of work for today’s warehouse employee is going to change, that there’s no doubt.
It seems reasonable to suggest a traditional working week of 36.5 hours even on a rotating shift pattern – and even if those day lengths vary somewhat, is under threat.
Will a warehouse adopting various labour saving technologies need people in the same way in the future? We doubt it.
We can envisage a scenario where employees have multiple local employers and stitch their own working hours together, to suit their personal arrangements, making the technology work for them too – a win win.
We can see employers seeking workers whom they’ve previously inducted and taken along a Speed to Competency training journey to work hours to accompany the warehouse technology that’s been deployed thereby reducing the commitment to a full working week from one employee or a team of employees – making for a well orchestrated and synchronised warehouse operation.
Is it a revival of the traditional short term work Agency but less about finding people and more about sharing work opportunities and paying wages? A technology layer for the people.
Could the new UK Labour Government’s own employment law ideas make it a non starter?
Time will tell.
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