In its study "Labour shortages: what challenges for supply chains and logistics?", Descartes reports that 76% of companies are suffering from a lack of manpower.

The Descartes Systems Group has just published a study on labor shortages, after surveying 1,000 decision-makers in the European logistics sector. The results show that 76% of them claim to be experiencing labor shortages, and 37% consider this shortage to be important or even very serious.

58% indicate that this lack of manpower has a negative impact on their customer service performance. According to the survey results, the areas most affected are transport (61%) and warehousing (56%).

Focus on the French market

In France, where 150 supply chain directors and managers were surveyed, the 3 areas most affected by labor shortages are transport (68%), inventory, planning and distribution (57%), and transport planning (55%). The hardest-to-fill positions are drivers (23%), highly skilled workers (19%) and supply chain managers (18%), followed by warehousemen (15%).

Faced with this recruitment crisis, almost half of French logistics managers (46%) are investing in technology, but this rate is the lowest of all the countries surveyed in the study.

More specifically, 83% of them rely on technology to attract new talent, particularly automation and more specifically real-time automated shipment tracking to retain their skilled workers and improve productivity.

In addition to investments in technology, other solutions are being used to attract skilled labor: more flexible working hours (79%), part-time work (77%). And to maintain their teams and limit turnover, French supply chain companies are also focusing on training existing teams (85%), salary increases (78%) and flexible working hours (77%).

"The economic slowdown and the end of the Covid crisis had given rise to the idea in the logistics world that the labor shortages of recent years would ease. But this has not been the case. Supply chain companies continue to struggle to hire the people they need to grow.

With their performance linked to both the quantity and quality of their resources, supply chain managers need to rethink not only their hiring and retention strategies, but also how technology can help mitigate the challenges of this labor shortage," comments Mounir Zaïdi, Senior Sales Account Executive at Descartes.

RENAUD CHASLE Stratégies Logistique