Workforce Planning in Logistics: The Real Challenge Isn’t the Skills Shortage

Rising demand, growing customer expectations and a tight labour market have been putting logistics organisations under pressure for years, including in Switzerland. As a result, discussions often focus on vacancies and labour shortages.

However, this is where many organisations make a critical mistake. 

Many businesses are able to fill open positions, yet they continue to struggle with rising labour costs, high turnover, operational bottlenecks and productivity losses. The real challenge is therefore often not the number of available employees, but the ability to deploy the existing workforce efficiently and flexibly. 

“In our conversations with logistics companies, we repeatedly see that individual vacancies are rarely the biggest challenge. What really matters is how effectively organisations prepare their workforce for demand fluctuations, growth and changing business requirements.” 
José Fernández, Logistics Workforce Expert, Adecco Switzerland 

Particularly in Switzerland, where labour costs are high and competition for qualified talent remains intense, workforce planning is becoming an increasingly important strategic differentiator.

The Greatest Stress Test Doesn’t Happen During Day-to-Day Operations

Many workforce models perform adequately under normal operating conditions. Their weaknesses typically become visible only when demand suddenly increases.

The Christmas season, Black Friday and major e-commerce campaigns can push logistics operations to their limits within a matter of weeks. Organisations that rely primarily on short-term hiring or overtime during these periods often increase costs while placing additional strain on their workforce.

The most successful organisations take a different approach: they build workforce models that remain scalable even under pressure.

The Hidden Costs Often Come from Employee Turnover

Vacancies are always visible. The costs of turnover, however, are often underestimated.

Every employee departure creates additional recruitment effort, onboarding time and pressure on the rest of the team. This leads to productivity losses and can directly affect operational stability and service quality, particularly in warehousing and logistics environments.

For many businesses, a significant opportunity lies in improving employee retention and workforce planning.

Workforce Visibility Is Becoming a Competitive Advantage

While goods movements can now be monitored almost in real time, the same level of visibility is often missing from workforce management.

Many organisations know exactly how many shipments they process but have less clarity on which locations experience the highest turnover, where overtime is accumulating or how absenteeism affects productivity.

This is especially important for organisations operating multiple logistics centres, distribution hubs, fulfilment centres or production facilities, where a consistent view of workforce metrics is essential for effective decision-making.

Why Traditional Workforce Planning Is No Longer Enough

Automation, digital processes and AI-powered workforce and capacity planning are creating new opportunities, while also increasing operational complexity and continuously reshaping logistics operations.

At the same time, expectations around productivity, service quality and flexibility continue to rise, as do requirements related to sustainability, workplace safety and compliance.

What Successful Logistics Organisations Do Differently

High-performing organisations do not view workforce planning as a purely HR-related activity. Instead, they treat it as a strategic business function.

They align workforce planning with business objectives, consistently measure workforce metrics across locations and create the conditions needed to respond quickly to changes in demand.

The key question is:

"How can we ensure that we have the right people, in the right place, at the right time?"

Five Questions for Logistics Organisations

• For logistics leaders, the key consideration is how resilient their workforce model really is. The following questions can help identify potential weaknesses:
• Can we scale our workforce quickly during periods of peak demand?
• Are labour costs aligned with operational volume?
• Do we systematically measure turnover, absenteeism, productivity and time-to-fill?
• Are workforce KPIs measured consistently across all locations?
• Can we maintain service levels during sudden demand fluctuations?

If several of these questions remain unanswered, it may be time to start optimising your workforce strategy.

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