Are you looking for quality employees to staff your supply chain department? You may have better luck if you can offer summer hours, according to a survey conducted by LifeWork Search, a search and recruitment organization that specializes in supply chain planning and procurement.
A summary of the survey findings appear in Material Handling & Logistics’ article, Supply Chain in the Summertime. The article reports that 46% of survey respondents cited summer hours as the most important non-monetary benefit for employees, followed by an extra day off, a company outing, and a casual dress code.
“We’re starting to see a lot of companies put wellness and associated programs in place to help employees balance the challenges of work and life,” says Jason Breault, managing director of LifeWork Search. “More companies are coming to the realization that healthy-minded employees are more productive employees. We are constantly being asked by hiring managers what they should put in place to make their environment friendlier.”
The Georgia Tech Master of Science in Supply Chain Engineering1 is a new professional graduate degree program created to meet the growing demand for business-savvy engineers who can design and synchronize highly complex global supply chains. The program’s intensive 12-month curriculum delivers academic knowledge in analytic methods, supply chain engineering, and enterprise management while building professional practice skills and real-world industry experience, all leading to a respected graduate degree from the #1-ranked Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE).
Program applicants may come from a wide range of academic, business, and geographical backgrounds, but they will share a common motivation: to pursue a highly focused graduate education experience in supply chain engineering and to subsequently explore immediate career opportunities with global enterprises.
According to a recent survey done by Tompkins Supply Chain Consortium, companies are now more likely to have executive-level supply chain leaders. Nearly half of the retail and manufacturing companies who responded have a supply chain leader at the executive vice president level or above (the chart below shows a breakdown by industry.)
The executive director of the Consortium explains this increase in an SDCExec article:
“With supply chains becoming more dynamic and agile, organizations need to able to keep up with the pace,” says Bruce Tompkins, executive director of the consortium and author of the briefing. “And these companies are beginning to realize the significance of having a high-level supply chain executive influence their business strategies.”
Companies seem to be realizing that the supply chain can be a fundamental value driver in an organization, but in order for this to happen, procedures need to be in place across the board to ensure the entire supply chain runs as smoothly as possible. By having a voice high up in the executive level of a company, supply chain teams can ensure that supply chain management tactics are taken into consideration when operational decisions are made.
Although this is progress, some companies still have improvements to make when it comes to collaborating: about a quarter of the respondents said they have no formal process for aligning supply chain goals. If a company is large and has several different business units, it can be a problem if these units don’t communicate with one another. Even if each unit has its own supply chain, it will benefit everyone to share ideas and best practices.
With all of the buzz about the growing importance of supply chain operations, and how having visibility into a well-managed supply chain can save a company tons, you’d think that the people heading up these operations – the logistics and supply chain professionals – would have a seat on the board of directors. Well apparently that is not exactly the case, at least in Europe. According to a new survey, 40% of European retailers and manufacturers still fail to include any supply chain professionals on their managerial boards. That is not to say that companies are overlooking the cost-saving opportunities in the supply chains – many have actually increased their overall headcount in the department. It seems to me though, that if a company fully recognizes the value of having a well-managed supply chain, then the department should have a voice in the company’s governing body.
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