IN Brief:
- GXO is piloting a common labour management system in the US, UK, Netherlands, Poland and Spain.
- The platform provides real-time labour performance and workforce planning information through a standard operating framework.
- GXO expects wider network deployment to begin during 2027 after the current pilot phase.
GXO Logistics has started piloting a common labour management system across operations in the US, UK, Netherlands, Poland and Spain as it works towards a standard workforce planning framework across its global warehouse network.
The pilots are intended to establish a single platform for real-time labour performance and resource planning, giving site managers a common set of operating information while GXO prepares for wider deployment beginning in 2027.
The programme forms part of The GXO Way, the company’s framework for standardising operating practices and scaling processes across its network. GXO operates more than 1,000 facilities totalling over 200 million sq ft and employs more than 150,000 people, creating a substantial workforce planning problem across buildings with very different customer and process requirements.
A warehouse serving individual ecommerce orders can require a different labour pattern from an industrial parts operation, fashion fulfilment centre or high-volume retail distribution site. Order profiles, shift structures, equipment, service agreements and automation levels all affect where people are required during each part of the day.
The new labour management system is intended to provide a consistent performance framework without making those operations identical. Real-time information can show how actual labour deployment compares with planned workload and allow managers to move resources as order volumes change.
Bart Beeks, Chief Operations Officer at GXO, said: “A standardized LMS will support more informed decision-making and help us drive productivity at scale.”
Standardisation becomes harder as automation increases. A conventional manual warehouse may devote a large share of labour to walking, picking and transporting goods, while a goods-to-person system transfers some of that activity to robots and conveyors. Labour demand moves towards workstations, replenishment, equipment support and exception handling rather than disappearing.
A common platform can make those patterns easier to compare, provided the underlying measures reflect the work being performed. A straightforward units-per-hour comparison can be misleading when one site processes simple cartons and another handles complex multi-line orders, value-added services or tightly controlled industrial components.
The system consequently needs enough process context to distinguish operational improvement from differences between contracts. Standard data is most useful when managers can compare like activities and understand why labour performance has moved rather than simply ranking sites against one headline number.
GXO has already been scaling The GXO Way alongside its GXO IQ technology programme, using common processes and data tools across a business that continues to expand through new contracts and automation projects.
The labour platform adds another operating layer to that effort. Workforce requirements are closely tied to order forecasts, inbound schedules, transport cut-offs and equipment availability, so labour information becomes more useful when it connects with warehouse and customer demand data rather than remaining in a separate reporting system.
Peak periods expose those dependencies quickly. A building can have enough people on site in total but still miss service targets if labour is concentrated in receiving while outbound orders are building faster than expected, or if automated workstations are staffed below the level required to use available equipment capacity.
Real-time visibility can shorten the delay between workload changing and management responding. It can also support longer-range planning by giving the operator a more consistent record of how demand, productivity and staffing vary by customer, process and season.
The pilots across five countries give GXO a broader test than a single-site implementation. Local labour markets, operating practices and regulatory environments differ, while customer operations range from heavily manual processes to facilities containing substantial automation.
That variety should expose where a single global framework requires local configuration before wider deployment. The objective is not to make every operation use the same staffing model, but to create a common system through which those local models can be planned and measured.
Rolling the platform across a network of more than 1,000 facilities will be considerably more complex than the pilot phase. Existing warehouse systems, customer data and site processes need to connect without disrupting contracts already operating against fixed service levels.
GXO’s 2027 rollout will therefore test whether the common platform can remain consistent while accommodating those differences. The useful result will not be the number of sites connected to the software, but whether managers can allocate people more accurately as workload shifts across increasingly automated warehouse operations.
