The Question to Ask First

Most discussions about warehouse labour become discussions about pay. One question moves past that.

The question

How many of the people who started last month are still here?

Ask it of the operation as it is, not of the annual attrition figure.

What the answers mean

"Nearly all of them." A working arrangement. The remaining problems are about progression and long-service retention, which are different subjects and less urgent.

"About half." The normal answer in this sector, and it points at the first fortnight rather than at pay.

"I don't know." The most common answer, and the finding. An operation that cannot say this is not measuring the thing that determines its labour cost.

"We don't track agency separately." Which means the figure is wrong in the direction that matters, since agency workers are the group most likely to leave and least likely to be recorded as leaving.

Why it works

It replaces a percentage with a count of real people, which nobody argues with.

It points at a window — the first ninety days — rather than at a diffuse cultural problem.

And it can be answered from records everybody already holds, which removes the usual delay of waiting for a system.

The second question

Why did the others go?

Not from the leaving-reason field, which says "personal reasons", but from asking them a week after they left.

The answers cluster tightly: the job was not as described, the shift did not work, transport, the first payday, a supervisor, or the physical demand.

All six are things the operation controls, which is the useful part.

The third question

What did the advert say, and is it true?

Read it, then walk the floor, then decide whether somebody reading it would feel they had been told the truth.

Ten minutes, and on most sites it locates a cause of week-one attrition immediately.

Using them on a proposal

Somebody proposing an engagement programme, a retention bonus or a culture initiative should be asked the first question.

If the answer is unknown, the proposal is being made without a diagnosis.

And if the answer is "half", a programme aimed at long-service staff is aimed at the wrong group.

What the three questions establish

Where people leave, why, and whether the operation promised something it does not deliver.

Which is a diagnosis, and it takes an afternoon rather than a consultancy engagement.

Everything else in this collection is what to do about each answer.

The collection in one line

Tell people the truth before they start, make the first two weeks survivable, and find out honestly why the ones who left went.

Most of what is spent on warehouse retention is spent after the point where the decision was made, and the three questions above locate that point.

What to do with each answer

"Nearly all of them": move to progression and long-service retention, which are different problems.

"About half": the first fortnight, which is where the rest of this collection points.

"I don't know": produce the number this week, before anything else.

"We don't track agency": produce it including them, which will be worse and will be the real figure.

Asking it of somebody else's operation

The three questions work as a diligence tool on an acquisition, a new contract or a third-party site.

How many of last month's starters are still here, why did the others go, and is the advert true.

A site that can answer all three is run by somebody paying attention, and that is worth more than any policy document you will be shown.

Asking it of a proposal

Anybody proposing a retention initiative should be asked the first question.

If the answer is unknown, the proposal is being made without a diagnosis, and it will be aimed at whichever group is easiest to design for.

How it fails in practice

The question is never asked, so the discussion becomes about pay by default, because pay is the thing everybody can name without data..

The check

Ask it in a management meeting and watch how long it takes to get an answer.

The delay is the finding.