The logistics sector witnessed an exponential change due to covid-19. Initially what seemed like doom due to the sudden outbreak of the pandemic turned into a boom for this sector. Businesses gradually adjusted to the new normal resulting in logistic acceleration and challenges for frontline workers.
The global logistics market is projected to reach $12,975.64 billion by 2027, registering a CAGR of 6.5% from 2020 to 2027
Many businesses are jumping on the eCommerce bandwagon fueling the growth of the logistic industry. The rising demand for healthcare supplies and the Covid-19 vaccine have boosted the logistics market share. As pharmaceutical manufacturers compete to respond to the global health crisis, the need for timely delivery and distribution has become a priority.
Moreover, logistics businesses are leveraging technologies to upscale their functionalities for meeting the growing demand. With the logistic acceleration and the leap towards technology, the challenges have increased for the frontline workforce.
Is your frontline workforce prepared for it?
Are they ready to address the technological hurdles?
Are they fully equipped to tackle the challenges ahead?
If not, then now is the time to upskill and prepare them.
5 Ways to Upskill Logistics Frontline Workers
Frontline workers are the face of the logistic business. Exceptional performance from their end is of paramount importance. If they fail to deliver a satisfactory service, the client will immediately switch to the competitor without thinking twice.
“A brand is defined by the customer experience. The experience is delivered by the employee” – Shep Hyken
Besides, mistakes can jeopardize the future of a logistics business. Delivering a parcel twice or delivering the wrong product can make the difference between profit and loss as well as affect the reputation of the business. Negative reviews spread like wildfire. Frontline upskilling and reskilling can help in making employees more efficient to avoid such mistakes that can cost the company.
So, how do you upskill or reskill your frontline workers? Here are 5 effective ways.
1. Design courses to solve real-world problems
Upskilling gives employees an opportunity to explore their dormant strengths and capabilities. However, these upskilling or reskilling courses for the frontline workers should be carefully designed. Due to mismanagement in the supply chain, many goods are damaged and even lost.
The courses should be designed to address such real-life problems. So, it is important to evaluate different parts of your logistics business operations to identify the problem areas. It is even imperative to find out what more the company needs to do to improve the customer experience. A proper need assessment can help in strengthening your supply chain and position the business for success.
Once you are aware of the hurdles, create a plan to develop a meaningful course. Ensure that complex skilling and development methods are avoided as that would lead to a low learning rate. The content should be easily digestible for the logistics frontline workers. Be explicit and include real-life use cases to help them understand how to handle a specific situation. For instance, highlight how a delay resulted in a loss of a huge contract and what measures need to be taken to ensure timely delivery in the future.
2. Embrace microlearning for frontline workers
Logistic frontline workers are always on the move. So, microlearning is the best way to address this time constraint. You can easily upskill your frontline worker without taking much of their time.
The bite-sized modules increase the learning and engagement rate. Content delivered in short chunks is easy to absorb. The frontline workers can effortlessly access the content from their desired device and complete the courses at their convenient time. Microlearning is a smart way to integrate information into an employee’s working memory so that it can be applied in real life.
3. Check the effectiveness of courses
You invested several hours in creating a course. But is it effective? Are the frontline workers completing the courses? It is important to measure the effectiveness of the course to make real-time changes for increasing the completion ratio.
The best way to amass such insights is through an Analytics Builder. You can easily track the usage, frequency, completion rate, etc through insightful charts. Some of the frontline workers might not find a course relevant or helpful so they might choose not to invest the time in it. For instance, insights may reveal that freshers are completing a certain course but the experienced workers are not engaging with the course. So you can design a more advanced level course for them to increase adoption.
Similarly, you can even collect analytics to find out how frontline workers in different cities are interacting with your courses. One size doesn’t fit all. Every city is different, so the frontline workers might have unique pain points. So you can easily set the filter in a skill analytics builder to gather specific insight about a particular city. (Interesting isn’t it? Need to know more about an analytics builder? Talk to us and we will guide you).
4. Implement a single platform for training
The day-to-day logistical operations are managed by several teams who are dependent on each other. For instance, if the packaging team doesn’t complete their work on time, the delivery team won’t be able to fulfill an order at the committed time. This results in delays. So it is important to have a single training platform to keep everyone on the same page.
Having a single platform for training will improve consistency and minimize the risk of ineffective productivity. By implementing a single training platform you can move around things easily and ensure that the KPIs are met. Tracking performance would get much easier with a single platform for upskilling and the development of the frontline workers. Moreover, it would reduce the internal clashes that most logistics companies often face.
One of our clients “Delhivery” who are India’s leading supply chain service company faced the same issue before using disprz. There were regular clashes between the training and operation team that led to higher churn. disprz provided them with a single platform to meet all their training needs. They could conduct 4-5 webinars in a day, have live sessions on internal process management, track the attendance, and effortlessly have assessments to improve the performance of their frontline workers. They witnessed a lower churn rate and instances of damage after using disprz. All the processes functioned smoothly like a well-oiled machine giving them the results they expected.
5. Bring training in the flow of work
Upskilling is not a one-stage process but a continuous development journey. Technology and consumer demand are continuously changing. Hence training in the flow of work has gained more attention in the modern logistic space. Learning while working can help the frontline worker in enhancing their skill and knowledge
A quality learning program increases the efficiency of the employees. With training in the flow of work, frontline workers can easily find the answers they need whenever they get stuck at any point. Moreover, they can easily implement what they learn. Using disprz you can create a learning journey so the frontline worker can easily embrace knowledge and new skills while working. It is a great way to integrate learning into the flow of work. You can monitor the learning journey and track progress in real-time.
Conclusion
A skilled workforce capitalizes on every opportunity that comes their way. So it is important to upskill and reskill your employees. Training should be integrated into the flow of work. Make it easier for the frontline worker to learn new skills. For instance, leverage mobile learning as that is a smartphone device that makes learning possible anytime, anywhere, on the go, on the job for frontline workers. The more they learn the better they can serve your esteemed customers .
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