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Carolyn Moir-Grant
With over 30 years of experience at Allstaff, Carolyn has been a guiding force in shaping the agency’s reputation as a trusted recruitment partner.
High turnover in temporary warehouse workers is one of the most common complaints employers have about recruitment agencies – and it’s usually put down to poor screening or bad luck with candidates. In our experience, that’s often not the real story. This article sets out what’s actually behind most turnover problems, the questions worth asking any agency about reliability, and what genuinely changes when the right agency is in place.
It’s the easiest thing in the world to blame the agency when temporary workers keep leaving – but when we actually dig into a client’s turnover problem, the honest answer is more often about pay, or a supervisory and management style issue, than about who was recruited. An inclusive, friendly working environment genuinely changes outcomes: supervisors and managers who are properly trained, who make a point of greeting temps, shaking hands, or just checking in each morning, tend to get the absolute best out of any employee – temp or permanent. We see a lot of supervisors who could really use more training in this, and it’s costing companies more than they realise.
We’d rather say that plainly than pretend every turnover problem starts and ends with candidate selection. If an agency tells you turnover is entirely down to the people they’ve placed, that’s worth questioning rather than accepting at face value.
A few questions are worth asking directly, and the quality of the answer tells you a lot:
Strong answers here sound specific and slightly uncomfortable – they acknowledge shared responsibility rather than deflecting it entirely onto the client or the candidate pool. Evasive answers sound reassuring but say nothing concrete.
We’re genuinely friendly, and we’ve all been the temp and the job seeker ourselves – so we take the same approach to candidates that we’d want taken with us. We advise, we don’t instruct. If a candidate doesn’t want to accept a temp role, that’s absolutely fine – it has to be right for them, and we think that honesty is exactly what makes the difference. Our candidates are our biggest form of reputation, and we care about getting it right all round, not just filling a shift.
Practically, that shows up in a few specific ways. We ensure pay is always met, regardless of whether timesheets have been confirmed late by clients – that’s not the candidate’s problem to absorb. We regularly manage temps to make sure they’re aware of the paid holidays they’re entitled to take, and we support with a lot more than just the placement itself. None of that is complicated or expensive to do – it’s simply a decision to treat temporary workers with the same consideration as permanent staff, which is exactly the kind of thing that reduces early leavers.
Retention isn’t only the agency’s responsibility – the employer’s side of the relationship matters just as much:
When a client comes to us with a current turnover problem, we start with a friendly but frank conversation about what the issues actually are – and we ask directly why they believe it hasn’t worked with their current agency. Quite often, it turns out the other agency wasn’t really selecting candidates at all, just sending bodies to fill a gap. We’ll ask whether a proper brief was ever taken, and whether the hiring company was given the time to do a site tour. Those questions alone usually reveal most of what’s gone wrong — and they’re the same questions we’d encourage any employer to ask before appointing anyone.
We’re happy to have that frank conversation with you – including telling you honestly if the cause sits somewhere other than recruitment. If turnover is costing you time and money, get in touch with our Warehouse & Logistics team and we’ll talk through what’s actually driving it.
Is high turnover in temporary warehouse workers always the recruitment agency’s fault? Not necessarily. It’s often driven by pay or management and supervisory style – an inclusive, well-trained approach to day-to-day management consistently improves retention, regardless of who did the recruiting.
What questions should I ask an agency about worker reliability? Ask what they actually change when taking on a client with a turnover problem, whether they’re willing to say the cause might sit with the employer, what specifically they do differently in screening and briefing, and how they handle pay and holiday entitlement for temps.
What should I do if my current agency blames turnover entirely on candidates or the market? Treat it as a warning sign. A good agency will be willing to have a frank, honest conversation about shared responsibility rather than deflecting entirely.
What can employers do themselves to reduce turnover in temporary warehouse staff? Invest in supervisor and management training, treat agency workers with the same day-to-day respect as permanent staff, and stay open to feedback if an agency identifies the cause as internal rather than a recruitment issue.