2022 Virtual Summit: Enabling the workforce of the future

Every year around this time, the editorial staffs of Logistics Management and sister publication Supply Chain Management Review set out to program our Virtual Summit. In fact, 2022 marks the 17th year that we’re offering our readers a line-up of educational sessions (going live on Dec. 8) designed to prepare logistics and supply chain professionals for the year to come.

Well, this year it didn’t take us long to realize that the need to improve strategies to attract, hire, and apply the technology necessary to retain a workforce should be top of mind for logistics and supply chain management professionals. In fact, after discussions with a few of our speakers, we decided to focus on how we can better apply new thinking—as well as technology—to enable the workforce of the future.

In my follow-up conversation with Chris Boone, Ph.D., assistant professor at Mississippi State University and the lead author our “31st Annual Study of Logistics and Transportation Trends” (see Sept. LM), the majority of the new findings this year point to the fact that our people certainly persevered and continued to deliver during the past two years of unprecedented disruption.

And while Boone and our research team confirmed, once again, that people are the most important link in the supply chain, we have a long way to go in becoming more proactive and creative in finding, hiring and retaining the right people—and we need to heighten awareness to this reality.

“Companies are quick to proclaim people as their top priority, and people may be a big item in the financial statements,” says Boone, “but this is different from being strategic about talent or prioritizing and investing in talent as the source of competitive advantage. How many companies have a talent strategy as detailed as their technology strategy?”

As we discussed his session, in which he’ll put this year’s findings into deeper context, Boone suggested shippers adopt a line of thinking that runs parallel to how many are looking to position their own logistics operations.

“Just like a ‘shipper of choice’ program helps shippers and carriers better communicate and align efforts to improve efficiency and secure capacity, employers should seek to be ‘employers of choice,’ ” says Boone. “An ‘employer of choice’ needs a firm understanding of its talent, skill and technology needs; understands the desired outcomes of its workforce; and then commits to creating jobs and career paths that are desirable to potential employees.”

And while that need to commit to a talent strategy will resonate in Boone’s session, he’ll also touch on technology’s growing role, as robotics and automation promise to make supply chains more efficient and less labor intensive while new AI platforms aim to enhance human performance and decision making.

In fact, this year’s keynote will address the unfolding “human-centric digital automation” trend that Mike Griswold and the analyst team at Gartner recently identified in their recent Supply Chain Top 25 report. In these top performing supply chains, the team reports a more structured approach to applying digital capabilities that are directly linked to an improved human experience—as well as smarter operations.

“In response to labor challenges, supply chain organizations are balancing investments in automation for the long-term and landing technologies in the near-term focused on reducing employee cognitive overload,” says the Gartner team. “These nearer-term technology decisions help prioritize time and focus attention to areas where people perform better than machines.