Key Takeaways

• Workforce volatility is now a boardroom issue. Companies that build systems around instability will outperform those waiting for things to settle down.
• Absenteeism, turnover, and poor incentive design are quietly draining warehouse margins every day, often before operators even measure it.
• The path from chaos to calm runs through three proven strategies: fair pay tied to measurable output, agile insourcing, and a culture that keeps people engaged and on the floor.

If you manage warehouse or distribution center operations, you already know the feeling: something’s always on fire. Whether it’s no-shows, a surge in relabeling work driven by tariffs, a new wave of temp workers who need training, or automation that doesn’t quite deliver what the brochure promised, the chaos feels relentless.

That’s exactly what we tackled in our recent webinar, From Chaos to Calm: Workforce Strategies That Actually Work, featuring Valentine Trent, VP of Market Development at iJility, and Campbell Diehl, who leads Operations and Workforce Solutions at iJility. Both spend their weeks inside facilities. They’ve seen what works, and they know what quietly drains the margin.

Here’s a recap of what they shared.

The New Operating Reality

The consensus from Valentine and Campbell was clear: this isn’t a temporary rough patch. Shifting demand, rising labor costs, tariff-driven rework, and unpredictable absenteeism are the new environment. Companies waiting for things to calm down on their own are going to keep struggling.

“If you don’t own your labor strategy,” Valentine put it plainly, “it will most certainly own you.”

The good news? Volatility doesn’t have to mean chaos. The difference between operations that absorb the hits and those that unravel comes down to one thing: whether they’ve built systems designed for variability, or ones that only work when everything goes smoothly.

The Hidden Cost of Doing Nothing

One of the most eye-opening moments in the webinar was the real cost of turnover. It currently costs approximately $4,600 to hire a single warehouse associate, and that’s before you factor in the soft costs: the supervisor pulled off the floor to train, the quality errors made while the new hire gets up to speed, and the SLAs at risk while your team runs lean.

Campbell pointed to absenteeism as equally damaging and equally underestimated. When 10 to 20% of your workforce doesn’t show up on a given day, workflows shift immediately, supervisors fight fires, and performance slips in multiple places at once. As Campbell put it: “Margin erosion doesn’t come from one dramatic failure. It comes from daily instability.”

Three Strategies That Actually Move the Needle

1. Fair Pay + Measurable Incentives Pay expectations are rising, and pizza parties aren’t going to close the gap. What does work is tying compensation directly to performance: specifically throughput, quality, and attendance. Campbell and Valentine were both clear that incentive programs fail when they’re too complex, poorly communicated, or misaligned with broader operational goals. The key is keeping it simple, transparent, and tied to metrics that actually matter.
2. Agile Insourcing Rather than cycling through waves of temp labor with no accountability, agile insourcing means building a trained, flexible workforce you can move to the work, scaling up and down as demand shifts. Valentine acknowledged that the idea feels risky to a lot of operators at first, but made a strong point: the long-term reliance on temp help is actually the bigger risk.
3. Culture of Success Culture sounds soft. The ROI isn’t. When employees see a growth path and feel connected to their team, they stay. And when they stay, performance stabilizes. Valentine summed it up from the boardroom perspective: “Culture absolutely protects your margin. Period.”

What “Calm” Actually Looks Like

When Melih asked Campbell to define calm at the close of the webinar, the answer was refreshingly concrete: stable attendance, controlled costs, and consistent output. Valentine added one more: “Confidence, not reaction.”

That’s the goal: not the absence of challenges, but the systems and strategy to absorb them without unraveling.

Watch the full webinar below or on iJility’s YouTube page. You can also download the transcript to go deeper on any of these topics.

This is Part 1 of our workforce strategy content series based on the iJility webinar. Coming up next: a closer look at how fair pay and measurable incentives can reduce absenteeism and build a more loyal workforce.