GXO Establishes Gig Worker Program at Warehouses
GXO is entering the gig economy.
The contract logistics provider completed a pilot of a workforce flexibility program where 1,100 gig workers supplemented employees at eight GXO warehouses—and is now prepping a wider rollout.
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“Tapping into the gig workforce expands our talent pool and reduces costs for our customers,” said Dawn Nixon, senior vice president, human resources at GXO, in a statement. “For those who place a premium on flexible hours, our program enables us to offer greater flexibility to meet worker needs and helps us easily adjust our headcount as customer volumes change. It also creates unparalleled agility for our operations and new opportunities for our full-time team members to upskill. We look forward to expanding this program to our operations across the U.S.”
The Greenwich, Conn.-based company has not shared details on where the expansion would take place.
GXO partnered with industrial staffing company Employbridge on the pilot program.
With the pilot, GXO posts a job, including details on dates, hours, type of work and pay. That job is instantaneously dispatched by Employbridge’s gig worker app, EmployGig, to candidates who best match the requirements, and they can then signal their interest.
At the sites where GXO piloted the program, nearly three-quarters of the participants are women and almost a quarter are stay-at-home parents or primary caregivers for children. Participants include people ages 18 to over 65, with the most, approximately a third, coming from the 25–34 age group.
“We’re taking a better approach to workforce management,” said Nixon. “We’re creating a more diverse and engaged team—making sure our employees have the best experience and balanced capacity, even when we have seasonal changes in volumes throughout the year in industries such as fashion, technology and consumer electronics.”
According to the logistics provider, the program has enabled GXO to better respond to customers in real time to changes in demand while reducing costs by more efficiently managing and forecasting headcount.
GXO made the announcement the same month it unveiled it will manage operations at a 750,000-square-foot Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) distribution center in Dorsten, Germany launching in early June.
The companies locked themselves within a 20-year partnership, with the lifetime value of the deal expected to be nearly $1 billion, said GXO CEO Malcolm Wilson in a first-quarter earnings call earlier this month.