Warehouse Labour-Standards Recovery Leader

The mandate

A serious injury review uncovered untrained agency workers assigned to complex equipment, edited time records, productivity bonuses detached from safe methods and client peaks staffed through repeated same-day requests. Warehouse scorecards remained profitable because recruitment churn, supervisor overtime and agency mark-ups sat outside contract reviews. The regional workforce executive departed during regulator and client scrutiny. The interim assumes operating workforce authority while safety, legal and labour-relations officers retain protected judgments.

The appointment starts within two weeks and runs twelve months through regulator closure, two retail peaks and permanent recruitment beginning in month four. The first twenty days protect workers, reconcile headcount, training and time, and suspend unsafe incentive or agency practices. Months two through seven rebuild labour demand, competence, scheduling, supervision, timekeeping and supplier governance. The final phase proves sustainable staffing through unannounced peak, absence and agency-loss exercises before successor handover.

Handover is complete when the permanent leader has chaired ten workforce-control reviews, all 44 sites reconcile people, hours, competence and task, corrective actions carry accepted evidence, payroll disputes meet closure thresholds and two peaks operate within safe overtime and trained-capacity limits. The successor inherits site archetypes, client demand volatility, agency dependencies, supervisor gaps, labour-relations issues, productivity methods, cost-to-serve changes and a ninety-day permanent-owner plan.

The interim may stop unsafe work, reallocate trained labour, change scheduling and supervisor ratios, suspend an agency, reject unstaffable client plans, replace temporary workstream leads and approve remediation within budget. Collective agreements, employment-status positions, permanent executive appointments, client contract amendments, facility closure, regulator settlements or spending above USD10 million require legal, labour, client or board approval. Safety officers may stop work independently and cannot be overruled.

Commercial repricing, network redesign, automation procurement, legal investigation of individuals and long-term benefits redesign are outside scope. Recovery cannot improve productivity by removing induction hours, suppressing injury or time disputes, rotating untrained workers or assigning impossible standards to contingent labour. The remit is lawful, safe and economically visible warehouse staffing with a deliberate transfer to permanent 3PL leadership.

Why this seat is open

The injury connected workforce practices, client peaks and contract economics that had been governed separately. A leadership vacancy now spans 44 live sites and two approaching peaks. The group needs an operator who has held warehouse labour authority, can make immediate service trade-offs and will preserve independent safety and labour determinations under intense client pressure.

What you will own

• Reconcile employee and agency identity, hours, competence, task, supervision, productivity, pay exception and safety event across every site.
• Decide trained-labour allocation, scheduling, supervisor coverage and client-volume acceptance within delegated operational authority.
• Reset workforce forecasts around order profile, engineered method, learning curve, absence, turnover and safe overtime capacity.
• Establish agency controls for recruitment, eligibility, induction, task restriction, time approval, complaints, invoicing and removal.
• Close regulator, worker and client commitments through sampled shifts, payroll journeys, competence evidence and site observations.
• Exercise demand surge, high absence, agency withdrawal, system outage, equipment constraint and supervisor shortage.
• Induct the permanent leader and transfer site risks, supplier cures, labour issues, client assumptions and open capacity decisions.

Candidate qualifications

• Has held executive workforce and operating accountability across large multi-client warehouse or industrial labour networks.
• Can evidence recovery of safety and service after contingent-labour controls or productivity standards failed under peak demand.
• Understands warehouse methods, competence matrices, labour planning, agency governance, timekeeping, payroll and cost-to-serve.
• Has made client-volume trade-offs while preserving safety, legal, labour-relations and worker-voice authority.
• Can distinguish rostered headcount, present labour, task-qualified capacity, productive hours and safely achievable throughput.
• Has transferred a scrutinised workforce recovery to permanent leadership after peak and agency-loss exercises.

Non-negotiables

• Can start onsite in Chicago within two weeks and rotate weekly among high-risk warehouses.
• Will not override safety stops, interpret employment law, suppress complaints or approve unsupported productivity standards.
• Brings direct warehouse labour authority at scale; human-resources policy or agency procurement alone is insufficient.
• Will retain training time, overtime, churn, injuries, pay disputes and unfilled demand in every productivity view.

1. 49 words maximum. Which warehouse productivity measure concealed the greatest workforce or safety debt?
2. 49 words maximum. How did you refuse client volume when task-qualified labour was genuinely unavailable?
3. 49 words maximum. Confirm your Chicago start date and largest employee-plus-agency workforce perimeter.