EXIT

Warehouse and Operations as a Career

Did anyone have a birthday this week, I love birthdays! If you did a shout out to you from Warehouse and Operations as a Career. I’m Marty and we’re all going to realize another year passing bye sometime within the next 365 days. We age, and with that aging comes great memories and experiences. We grow within our family, and we start our own families. The same goes for our jobs and careers. We gain experience performing our tasks and move up within the many different departments. As we’ve learned here at WAOC, it is important to have plans and goals. And we need to keep adjusting them to fit our accomplishments and life opportunities. I think most of us are planning by now, and journaling so we can stay ahead of this game called life! But one thing I feel we don’t think enough about is our exit strategy. What are you going to do when you’re not quite the best of the best any longer? I mean we won’t always be that top order selector, or forklift operator, or loader or unloader. Even in our front-line management positions, they’ll come a time when we are not going to enjoy or maybe even be able to chunk those cases anymore!

With all the planning and goal setting you’re doing this year are you in long term mode, do you have an exit plan already in place, or at least one in the works? Today I’d like to talk about just that, an exit strategy.

After last week’s episode I heard from our friend Cindy B Brown, you remember her, she hosts the Podcast Unlocking the Secret to Living Rich. If you have not caught an episode, I’d urge you to check it out. You will be richer next year if you can do even 10% of her suggestions. And she will be introducing a new Financial Podcast next month. Anyway, she passed along the idea of exit jobs for aging warehouse workers. Hence todays thoughts were born!

I’m pretty excited about todays show. I really started thinking. Within our industry there could be quite a gap between when we’re tired of or can’t perform at that level, our best of the best level any longer and our retirement. And I think that gap is years and miles apart! Shoot, I know many people, aged and experienced that are working today and still loving their jobs. Me being one of them!

I reached out to one gentleman, a longtime friend who has been in the warehouse sanitation field for over 40 years. This guy can tell you everything the USDA, FDA, AIB, BRC or city inspector and fire marshal are going to be looking for and what kind of reporting you’d better have and be able to get your hands on.

He loves the art of keeping a warehouse clean. But that involves a lot of walking, bending, pulling and pushing. He had been a sanitation worker and then a lead at this one company for over 33 years. Throughout the years he had self-educated himself regarding audits and how to conduct them. He learned how to properly use the cleaning equipment and chemicals needed to keep his workers and warehouse safe. He’d suggest seminars and conferences for himself or a member of management to attend so their company could stay informed about new procedures and processes on the market.

They had never had a Supervisor over Sanitation. The Director of Operations had always overseen it.

But my friend had a plan, he’d had a plan for over 20 years. He shared with me that he had taken all those courses and stayed up to date with his industry because he could see how important record keeping was going to be. He witnessed the tide turning within his field and all the regulation being developed. His plan was to be that Sanitation Supervisor, and he made it happen. He grew into it as the industry and company grew into it. He planned and rightfully so he is proud of it!

Another person I called had just retired from his company as a forklift operator. He’d worked for them, as a lift driver for 34 years! I was talking about what I wanted the topic to be today and he too shared that he had started planning for his exit after his first 10 years with the company. He’d seen a lot of them, the time old timers there when he was young, just not able to perform at the ever-increasing productivity levels and they had little to fall back on. He explained that he had participated in everything financial program his company had to offer. Their pension plan, the 401K program and stock purchase opportunities. He shared that there were weeks that he skipped lunch, and weeks that things were lean around the house, but he had a plan and stuck to it. He had a plan. And that plan paid off for him. He is very comfortable living through his golden years. He feels accomplished. He put 2 kids through college and is living the dream by the lake in his family’s little lake ranch house. He had an exit plan.

So is it too late for us that have not thought of an exit plan to do so. Of course not, absolutely not! As a matter of fact, I’m one that would like to expand on the idea. I’d also like to share that neither of the two gentlemen we just spoke about enjoyed not going to work and that they both are doing some side hustles just to be doing something. But more about that in a few minutes!

So what are a few career changes we can consider and staying in the industry we love. Well, there are quite a few opportunities out there!

I know one individual that after spending about 20 years in the warehouse field as an order selector, probably working with 10 to 12 different companies, today he is a recoup person. No productivity, simply making the decision to discard returned product or clean it up and place it back into inventory. With today’s e-commerce and on-line ordering, he saw his present facility needing a dedicated person to issue Return Authorizations Codes and handlining the growing volume of returned product. He loves his new career.

Another order selector, a gentleman with over 25 years of selecting experience. He has worked for just about all the large foodservice distributor companies is now sharing all that knowledge by being the trainer at his job. He tells me it was a bit of an adjustment for him. Instead of teaching his new boots how he did it, cutting corners, not following the rules, especially all the preferred work methods and safety processes but instead teaching them the proper way of being the best!

I think both of these are great choices. The first gentleman saw a need, spoke with management, and created his position.

And the second guy, well, he is putting those years of experience towards a good cause and training others to perform a task that can lead to their long-term careers.

Cindy mentioned the recruiter position may be a great move for that aging out warehouse person. I could not agree more. I believe any of us with warehousing and those experiences could bring a lot to the table for any staffing agency. Recruiting can be taught, not that it isent a hard and stressful job but it can be taught fairly easily when coupled with the years of experience we have with working with the very Canidates we’ll be speaking with! Who better to hire a warehouse person than one that has done the task!

I am working with a recruiter right now that came from the world of unloading. He then became an unloading Supervisor, on to order selecting, then receiving and now, well, he is a recruiter. I’m speaking with him about being an upcoming guest. He’s been on the show a couple of times already, I can’t wait to learn what he thinks about being a hiring agent now!

Ok, I keep talking about taking another position within the industry. But our exit plans can be a host of other things and even different industries.

There are a lot of side hustles out there. Maybe we don’t want or need to work full time. Check out her episode #133 from April 15, 2020, titled covid side hustles. And cruise her site, she has several others about the many ways to make additional income.

A few things some friends have going on is being a Notary Public, or a Notary Signing Agent, helping people with mortgage documents, witnessing their signatures. I’ve helped a couple of people become Process Servers, delivering legal documents to people who have court appearances. Oh, and I know a guy that makes a good living by officiating weddings. Yes, he was ordained by an on-line ministry a few years ago so he could marry his best friend and his new wife, found out that he enjoyed it and now performs weddings every weekend!

So yes, it is so important that we learn to plan and set goals, and don’t forget about journaling throughout our careers. But it is even more important that we have an exit plan. We all want to kick back on the front porch with a cool beverage in our hand at the end of the road right.

We’ll, thanks for checking in with us this week and remember to check out our Twitter and Facebook feeds using @whseandops where the discussion continues!

Until next week, think long term, and remember your safety and your team’s safety has to be a part of that plan.