Warehouse manpower planning strategies in times of financial crisis: evidence from logistics service providers and retailers in the Netherlands

The economic crisis that is experienced in Europe has a large influence on transport and logistics companies. Since turnover typically drops strongly during a crisis, companies try to reduce costs in order to survive. The study reported in this paper has investigated how manpower planning in warehouses has been used to counter effects of the crisis and what the results are of the measures taken. A survey was carried out among warehouses run by retailers and logistics service providers. The results of the survey show that there is a significant relation between a decrease in turnover and the four investigated manpower planning strategies. Furthermore, the study shows that the most effective manpower planning strategies are flexible planning of employees and balancing the workload. Hence, the study concludes that in particular better operational planning is a key strategy to counter the effects of the financial crisis, which is an important insight for the management of warehouses.