Align Your Workforce with Workload

Many wholesale businesses stick to a fixed schedule—same hours, same staff, every day of the week. But is that really the smartest way to operate?

Look at your workload trends. Mondays and Tuesdays are usually busy with your customers restocking after those weekend sales. But by Friday afternoon? Things tend to slow down. Yet, most businesses still have full teams in the warehouse, even when there’s not enough work to justify it. Your warehouse manager might end up having to find jobs to keep people busy i.e sweep down that aisle, face up over there or see if you can find any boxes to breakdown.

Here’s a smarter approach:
✔ Shift your hours to match demand. Instead of rigid shifts, add just 30 extra minutes per shift Monday to Thursday.
✔ Then reward your team. That small adjustment lets them finish two hours early on Friday—without reducing weekly hours.
✔ Boost efficiency. Staff stay fresh when they’re needed most, and the team gets a well-earned early weekend.

Small tweaks like this create happier employees and a more productive warehouse. Don’t let habit dictate your schedule—let your workload decide.

However, remember that you will still need people to be working on those Friday afternoons. Our suggestion is to create a brief survey and walk around, asking people what they prefer to do. You might get lucky and have the right number of people choosing to stay on their current shift, and likewise with how many of the pickers and packers want to change. This is often dictated by personal commitments, such as school runs.