Almost three quarters of survey respondents plan to increase headcount in the next year or so, but it is far from obvious where skilled employees are to be found.
The shortage of goods vehicle drivers has become notorious, but it is becoming equally difficult to attract the right people into our sector. The impact of Brexit on migrant worker choices clearly hasn’t helped, but the problems are similar across the developed world – an ageing population, declining birth rates, a greater proportion of young people continuing in education, while the e-commerce-fuelled demand for an ever-greater assortment of goods to be moved faster and in smaller quantities to more individual destinations shows little sign of abating.
And as many employers are finding, skills and labour shortages can’t be resolved just through higher pay – the COVID pandemic has enabled, or forced, millions of people to re-evaluate what they expect from the world of work.
Increased investment in mechanised and automated handling systems is one obvious way of alleviating labour shortages, but the developments and technologies we will see at IMHX 2022 will enable us to go much further than the simple replacement of man by machine.