Why logistics employees leave and how to understand why
Drivers, warehouse staff and delivery teams often leave without a conversation. How to understand why, from routes and rosters to pay and supervisors.
7 min readRead articleA fulfilment and supply chain service picks, packs and ships for other businesses. The work is shifts, targets and accuracy for several clients at once, and the HR job is a trained floor, honest shift planning and calm supervisors.

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Share your requirementsA fulfilment and supply chain services business stores goods for clients such as online brands and distributors, then picks, packs, labels and dispatches orders. The floor team includes receiving staff, putaway and picking staff, packers, quality checkers, dispatch loaders and forklift operators. Supervisors and shift leaders run lines, inventory controllers count stock, and client managers keep each brand happy. Orders surge in sale seasons, returns come back in bulk and each client has its own rules. Targets for picks per hour and order accuracy drive the floor. Many workers are on short engagements or arrive through local labour sources. See also HR for logistics and transportation.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in warehousing, fulfilment and supply chain services. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A client launches a sale without warning, temporary staff are added, and errors rise.
Pickers chase picks per hour, skip checks and send the wrong item.
Workers arrive in the morning, are shown the floor in ten minutes and handle fragile goods.
A packer must remember different labels and inserts for each client and gets confused.
A cycle count shows missing items, and the night shift blames the day shift.
Pallets in aisles, untrained operators and overloaded racking cause near misses.
The best picker becomes a leader and struggles with planning and conflicts.
Returned goods pile up unsorted, and no one is accountable for them.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Onboarding and Probation; Performance Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for logistics and transportation, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a warehousing, fulfilment and supply chain services business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Ask each client for sale dates and volumes, then plan staff, shifts and training in advance.
Ask each client for sale dates and volumes, then plan staff, shifts and training in advance. See attendance, shift and leave.
Count accuracy alongside picks per hour and review both with each picker.
Count accuracy alongside picks per hour and review both with each picker. See performance management.
Safety, scanning, packing standards, client rules and a buddy for the first week.
Safety, scanning, packing standards, client rules and a buddy for the first week. See employee onboarding.
A one-page sheet per client with photos of labels, inserts and packing standards.
A one-page sheet per client with photos of labels, inserts and packing standards.
Authorised operators, aisle rules, racking checks and an incident log.
Authorised operators, aisle rules, racking checks and an incident log. See workplace health, safety and wellbeing.
Short programme on planning, feedback and conflict, with a mentor for three months.
Short programme on planning, feedback and conflict, with a mentor for three months. See learning and development.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Peak planning and shift rules built with client volumes.
A one-day induction with a buddy for temporary and new staff.
Targets that count accuracy as well as speed.
Forklift, racking and aisle safety routines.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in logistics and transportation, and one on each of the topics this page points to.

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Ask clients for dates and volumes early, plan extra shifts, and train temporary staff before the peak day.
Measure both speed and accuracy, review them together and reward correct orders as well as fast ones.
Use a one-day induction with scanning practice, a buddy and a pocket sheet for each client.
Offer training in planning and feedback, give a mentor and review progress at three months.
Use cycle counts with signatures at handover so differences can be traced to a shift or a step.
We would meet the operations head, a shift leader and a picker and look at peak staffing, induction and accuracy tracking. A fitting first task is a peak plan with a one-day induction. Scope and fees are put in writing after we talk.
All 51 business types in logistics and transportation · Find another business type
See all HR topics for logistics and transportation, or another industry.
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