Accenture Discusses Pros and Cons with Workers across the World

The interest in distribution center is extremely high, driven by a severe labor shortage in most market, making it difficult to attract and retail workers, while pushing wages up sharply.

Supply Chain Digest Says... Another worker in France put it this way: “[Now,] I only intervene if there is a technical problem. It makes my role more interesting and less repetitive.” What do you say? Click here to send us your comments Click here to see reader feedback

Amazon was already pushing wages over $20 per hour, when Target announced last week it was going to start new employees in the most competitive areas up to an incredible $24 per hour.

Add to that that there are actually a wide variety of DC automation options, including traditional carton sortation systems, newer goods to person technologies, the increasingly popular mobile robots, and emerging robotic piece and case picking technologies.

Companies are obviously hoping the automation will require fewer tough to find DC workers, and/or reduce distribution costs.

But recently, a quintet of consultants from Accenture (Joe Lui, Raghav Narsalay, Rushda Afzal, Ida Nair Sharma, and Dave Light) thought about this interesting question: what do DC workers really think about automation?

To answer that question, the researchers conducted a series of in-depth video interviews with 34 warehouse workers and 33 front-line supervisors across the U.S., UK, France, Spain, and China.

They recently shared their findings on the Harvard Business Review On-Line web site.

Not surprisingly, many workers feared losing their jobs to automation. Accenture says 42% of the worker responses that were categorized as “negative sentiment” were related to fears around workers losing their employment.

That includes this comment a UK worker named Heather, who said that “I don’t mind working side by side to a robot, but I feel that sometimes my job is being pushed out to robots.”

Many of those interviewed were also worried about others losing their jobs, not just their own.

Accenture found that the second most common concern, accounting for 35% of all the negative responses, was a fear that inadequate training resources at their companies would reduce workers’ ability to succeed in a new, digital workplace.

For example, one US worker told the researcher that ““I think I would feel a little uncomfortable at first working with robots just because it’s new…It would be a little nerve-wracking at first, [but] once I have the proper training on how to interact with them and safety measures like shutdowns and things like that, I’d feel more confident and comfortable.”

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Some workers fretted management believed workers were more familiar and comfortable with automaton technologies than they really are.

The third major concern of workers relative to automation involves fears that if automation breaks, workers would be unable to fix the problem, and leading to a perhaps significant decline in throughput.

One worker in Spain, for example, said the meaning of various codes displayed when robots malfunctioned were only communicated when a problem was encountered for the first time.

So those were the negative perceptions of warehouse workers with regard to automation. But they also saw some positive impacts.

Specifically, 42% cited the potential to improve safety, including a reduction in physical wear and tear. One warehouse worker in Spain, for example, cited a significant decrease in back pain after the company he worked for went to more automated lift trucks.

Next on the list, 38% of the positive responses actually called out the speed and efficiency that automation can bring – interesting, and perhaps somewhat contradictory to the concerns about job losses.

The researcher quote a warehouse worker with a multinational food manufacturer in the UK commenting positively that the “robots have made the warehouse massively more efficient.”

Finally, Accenture said the remaining 20% of positive responses focused on how support from automation enabled workers to do their jobs better – and enjoy the job more.

For example, the researchers cite a US worker at a consumer electronics retailer who described how automation reduced mistakes in the shipment checkout process: “A lot of times there can be human error in the systems,” she explained. “Having technologies that help to improve the quality is great.”

Another worker in France put it this way: “[Now,] I only intervene if there is a technical problem. It makes my role more interesting and less repetitive.”

So there you have it – a not surprising but nonetheless interesting look at how warehouse workers think about automation.

The report also uses this research to make some recommendations to companies based on this research. SCDigest will be to summarize that next week.

The full article can be found here: How Do Warehouse Workers Feel About Automation?

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