Due to labour market shortages and the sector's unattractive image, companies are struggling to attract and retain talent. The logistics sector is therefore yearning for social innovation, and the Social Innovator Logistics Limburg (SILL) project is helping companies promote this innovation. At ICT & Logistiek, project leader Fred Nooijen explains how ten participating logistics companies got to work on organisational innovation.
Research shows that social innovation benefits companies on all sides: turnover grows by 9 per cent on average, customer numbers increase by 7 per cent, profit growth is 3 per cent and employees tend to be more satisfied. Moreover, social innovation is necessary to make technological innovations work better, Nooijen argues during his seminar at the trade fair.
With this in mind, the KennisDC Logistiek launched the Social Innovator Logistics Limburg (SILL) project in 2017. This was based on three objectives:
Internal company: getting social innovation higher on the agenda within companies
External company: positioning companies as leaders in social innovation (employer branding);
External sector: helping to positively charge the image of the logistics sector.The KennisDC was looking for ten companies for a pilot. Nooijen: "We surprisingly quickly found ten companies eager to participate in the pilot." Among the participants are DHL, Wetron and Broekman Logistics, as well as small companies like Multitax. "It is a very diverse set of companies. At Multitax, for example, only four people work. They wanted to participate anyway for ideological reasons."
Social maturity organisations
At the start of the project in February this year, a 0 measurement was taken of the social maturity of organisations. If the company is at Stage 1, it is still not very engaged in social innovation. Stage 5 has social innovation already in its DNA. Most companies in the pilot were at Stage 1 or 2. None of the companies were already at Stage 5.
Companies struggled with different challenges. Almost every company struggled with a shortage of logistics staff (8 companies) and staff advancement opportunities (8 companies). Also, 7 out of 10 companies noted a lack of initiative among employees.
Individual trajectory
Based on the results of the 0 measurement, an individual trajectory was started with each company with areas for improvement. "What stood out was that when we sat around the table with management, we got very different results than when we sat around the table with employees. With the latter group, what could be done became concrete much faster."
At the table with employees
One of the aspects the Knowledge Centre therefore advised each company: sit down with your employees. "The companies that have actively engaged in this are making huge strides. On the one hand with the inventory of problems, on the other with the solutions. The next step is to form working groups. Each working group consists of a group of employees working on one specific problem or bottleneck. This is social innovation at its best."
Horizontal flow and external branding
This directly addressed the lack of initiative among employees. Other measures the companies took: allowing employees to move on horizontally. "Because in many companies there is not always opportunity for vertical flow, they are looking at flow at the horizontal level: job rotation, job enrichment etcetera."
Participating companies also started working on external branding to improve the sector's image. "Many organisations were still not doing anything at all with external communication. We advised them to make a start, but they found it difficult. After all, in small companies there is no one for that. The project helped them, for instance, to engage an external party to take this up. External branding is essential for the sector's image."
Results in December
The results of the pilot will be presented in December. The KennisDC is already working on a follow-up to the project, which will not necessarily take place in Limburg. A similar project is being launched in Overijssel.
