This month in Modern Materials Handling: Ramp up investment, training and pay for retention

One of the most useful tools a B2B readership base can leverage to better understand a market and improve operations is pure market research—and it happens to be one of our strengths.

Over the past decade, Peerless Research Group (PRG), commandeered by 30-year research veteran Judd Ashenbrand, has been staying on top of the behaviors, attitudes and trends shaping the warehouse, distribution and supply chain management markets.

In that time, PRG has designed and fielded dozens of studies that track current and future spending, management and investment patterns, and this month releases two of our most popular annual studies—our Warehouse/DC Operations Study and Salary Survey.

Starting on page 38, senior editor Josh Bond dives into Modern’s 12th-annual Salary Survey, by far the most comprehensive snapshot of current warehouse and DC management compensation and job satisfaction in the market.

Bond reports that compensation continues to track upward in line with company performance—always good news—and again has found that more than 90% of respondents say they would recommend this career to others. However, he did see a bit of a wrinkle this year in the “job satisfaction” numbers, data that historically leans heavily to the positive side.

“I did a double take,” says Bond. “For the first time in 12 years, our initial read on the data showed signs of restlessness.”

In fact, the number of respondents who report they “like their current job” has fallen 7% to 85%, the lowest percentage ever recorded in the survey. In the meantime, the number of readers “passively looking” for a new job has nearly doubled to 28%, while one in 10 report they are actively looking to make a move—up from 5% last year.

“But the more we dug in the more we realized those numbers should be taken with a grain of salt,” says Bond. “We found that this desire to change is not about displeasure, but rather the appeal of new and exciting opportunities. It’s a recognition that technology and competition are disrupting the space and motivated professionals remain open to new possibilities—which is good news.”

And while our Salary Survey may be our most downloaded report of the year, the second most sought-after study is our annual Warehouse/DC Operations Survey, which editor at large Roberto Michel neatly wraps up on page 62. Not surprisingly, coping with rapid growth coupled with the ongoing labor challenges continue to keep warehouse and DC managers up at night. But as Michel reports, this year’s data indicate that readers are rolling up their sleeves and taking every step possible step to retain, maintain and even attract top employees from other operations.

“It’s interesting to see how our salary data dovetails into some of the high-level findings of this year’s operations survey,” says Michel. “It stood out this year that readers are getting more aggressive in investing and leveraging additional technology as well as ramping up training, pay rates and data quality issues—all in the name of attracting and maintaining a workforce.”