Online Training Benefits Owners and Workers Alike

Whether you’re a distribution center (DC) operator, manager, maintenance technician or a new hire, there’s never been a better time to consider online training.

Why? Because the top challenge faced by practically every DC is finding enough people. Unfilled DC jobs outnumber the available labor pool by at least six to one — a situation that’s only been magnified by the recent pandemic. And while attracting enough workers is difficult enough, finding people with the skills DCs need most — including the people who can teach those skills — is even harder.

But even as the pandemic recedes, there are signs that many of these challenges won’t go away anytime soon. As a result, online training now offers compelling advantages for owners, operators and workers at every level of today’s DCs.

Benefits for M&O Teams

Management and operations (M&O) teams often shy away from providing workers with “too much training”. They worry that employees will leave for another company, taking their newly acquired skills with them. Our experience, however, shows that investing in your employees often has the opposite effect of increasing worker satisfaction and overall retention rates.

What’s more, the benefits of trained workers don’t stop there. To begin with, training effectively enables you to increase your available pool of skilled workers. If you can’t find enough people with the skills you need — a challenge the entire industry is likely to grapple with for years to come — training good people is the next best thing. Effective training programs also enable you to onboard new hires faster and more efficiently.

In addition, a well-trained workforce is safer and more productive. More skilled people in-house can increase your uptime, maximize your system investments, and streamline lifecycle management activities like maintenance.

Benefits for Workers

DC employees have a lot of incentives to seek personal development as well. Even though labor shortages give workers more freedom to pick and choose for whom they work, they can increase their value even more by learning new skills.

Maintenance workers, for example, are likely to be in short supply for years as DCs increase their reliance on automated systems. Smart workers who take advantage of training opportunities will be more likely to command higher wages. They’ll also have an edge over less-skilled colleagues when seeking more fulfilling and higher-value jobs.

Overcoming Instructor Scarcity

DC workers aren’t the only type of labor that’s in short supply. Even though the pandemic is easing somewhat, many DCs are still having difficulty getting access to in-person training. This is a serious problem, because many of the same factors limiting in-person interactions, from social distancing to new viral strains, are also accelerating e-commerce demand. M&O teams simply can’t afford to stop building the essential skills of their workers. It also creates more and better opportunities for workers who take the initiative to improve their own skills.

As a result, distance-learning alternatives are seeing a lot of growth. They’re already proving to be a great way to augment traditional training programs and keep teams prepared to address any issues that may come their way.

Honeywell Intelligrated fulfills these needs with an extensive catalog of courses, available on-demand from the ICampus e-learning system. This online portal is seeing widespread use by DCs and individuals to train operators, maintenance personnel and new hires. It’s great for safety, general maintenance and refresher training. At the time of this writing, there are more than 300 courses available, and new ones are being added every month.

Every ICampus course has been created by OSHA-authorized and PMMI-certified trainers, and is designed for maximum comprehension and retention. The easy-to-use modules give participants the opportunity to enhance their skills in just 45 minutes or less. Best of all, they’re available on-demand at whatever time works best for you and can be completed at any pace.

To learn more about the many online training options ICampus can offer you or your workforce and to contact a training representative, click here.

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