Despite the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics noting a 24,000-person employment increase in the transportation and warehousing sector in May, most operations managers continue to struggle with staffing. Indeed, the 2023 MHI Annual Industry Report, released in March, found that workforce challenges continue to plague supply chains. Hiring and retaining qualified workers remains the top supply chain challenge for 57% of the industry, followed closely by 56% who say their biggest headache is the talent shortage.
Desperate to fill openings and maintain customer service level agreements (SLAs), many warehousing, distribution, or fulfillment managers turn to temporary labor. With more than 25,000 staffing and recruiting companies operating roughly 49,000 offices throughout the U.S., temporary and contract staffing options are everywhere. Yet the supply chain operations we work with often experience significant problems using temporary labor for short-term help.
FHI NOW® is different. We focus on solving your labor challenges, not creating new ones. If any of these five temporary labor problems sound familiar, we should talk.
Temporary agencies’ management teams cover several companies and facility locations, ensuring no one is directly accountable for a contracted team’s performance.
Every FHI NOW team includes an onsite team leader who is fully dedicated to your site and responsible for ensuring the productivity of FHI associates. FHI NOW team leaders have an average of 5-plus years of experience in warehouse operations and people management.
They work directly with operations managers, field questions, resolve concerns, and explain process changes or handling requests to FHI NOW associates. FHI NOW team leaders ensure your business needs and productivity goals are met safely, quickly, and efficiently. This enables your internal team to focus solely on your business strategy and goals.
Temporary agencies don’t provide onsite managers or leaders to train or supervise their contract workers. This means your operation’s staffers must take responsibility for and support these temporary workers.
FHI NOW SolutionOn average, FHI NOW associates have more than 14 months of experience working in warehouses, distribution centers, and fulfillment operations. They arrive onsite trained, experienced, and proficient in supporting manual, semi-automated, and automated processes.
Have a unique handling requirement or complex workflow?
FHI NOW onsite team leaders train FHI associates on operation-specific processes, ensuring your methodology is followed correctly. Your FHI NOW team arrives at your location ready to make an immediate impact.
Temporary workers are precisely that — temporary. They rarely have experience in warehousing and often don’t return a second day. This creates a never-ending cycle of dedicating internal resources to train new people, get them up-to-speed, rinse and repeat daily. Or worse, every shift.
FHI NOW has more than 1,600 trained associates at-the-ready recruited from across the U.S. They arrive in your facility with significant experience in receiving, selecting, packing, order consolidation, replenishment, put-away, shipping and more. Their sole objective is to fully and immediately support your existing workforce.
Dedicated and dependable, FHI NOW associates will be onsite throughout the entire contracted period. Your internal team no longer has to dedicate ample time, resources, and expenses to repetitive training for short-term labor. And if FHI NOW team members don’t hit 80% productivity in the first two weeks, we will replace the underperforming team member(s) at our cost.
Temporary workers are unlikely to have warehousing experience. That means they often perform tasks more slowly, with less accuracy, and higher safety risk. If a safety issue occurs, it’s the facility’s record that’s impacted — not the temporary agency’s. 
At FHI, nothing is more important to us than the safety of our associates. We train every FHI NOW associate “the FHI Way.” They arrive at your operation knowing how to work safely, efficiently, accurately, and productively. FHI’s training process emphasizes proper ergonomics, pre-shift stretching, safe lifting techniques, situational awareness, and more. Plus, all required equipment certifications are up to date.
Further, FHI NOW maintains an OSHA DART score of 4.0 — well below the industry average of 7.2. This demonstrates our emphasis on safety in the workplace and our associates’ commitment to meeting safety guidelines in all we do.
It’s doubtful that temporary agency workers will have experience in any of the broad range of roles required in a warehouse. Yet most operations need people who can competently perform tasks such as order selection, dock loading and unloading, putaway and replenishment, packing and shipping, and more. 
FHI NOW works with an operation’s management to determine the expertise needed. FHI assembles a custom team of experienced, professional warehousing associates with matching qualifications based on the operation’s needs. These can include:
FHI NOW® is an on-demand labor solution serving various markets and geographic regions. Our teams of experienced associates and supervisors help stabilize operations experiencing rapid growth, temporary staffing shortages, or seasonal volume spikes.
FHI NOW provides reinforcement to keep your operations on track. An operation’s management can refocus on its top priorities by engaging and deploying on-demand workers to supplement an existing workforce. Operations needing immediate help to stabilize their business can have a team at their site within 72 hours.
For over 30 years, FHI has built a reputation in the distribution and logistics industry for delivering the highest levels of experience, professionalism, safety, and commitment to Hard Work Done Right®. To leverage our expertise, schedule a call. We'll happily answer any questions and offer more details about putting FHI NOW to work for you.
If you need dependable support to reinforce your team and get you back on track, FHI NOW can help.
Our on demand, managed, experienced, trained, and safe team is available and can be on site in within 72 hours.
