Fulfillment Companies are wise to prepare early for Peak Season in 2021, as the issues that companies face, due to the effects of the pandemic, are unique and challenging. The following is a brief report on AMS Fulfillment’s early preparations with regard to employee safety, staffing and transportation.
Safety Measures:
*Our Client Service, IT and Accounting teams continue to work from home, but now in a hybrid environment. We have invested in laptops to create a “plug and play” environment for our teams, allowing them to rotate coming into the office.
*We have our own sanitation team “in house” to continue best practices of sanitizing and cleaning.
*We have eased back into meetings, gatherings, and educational classes, keeping the groups to a minimum. We continue to have bag lunches brought in when appropriate.
*We encourage social distancing during lunch and breaks by limiting seating to one chair per table. We also designated additional lunch shifts to avoid any lunchroom crowding.
*We take temperatures of employees when they arrive at work along with vendors who come into the building.
*We have eased into allowing visitors to our facilities, having anyone who visits always adhere to social distancing and masks on.
*We are continuing to support our employees’ desire to become vaccinated by holding clinics and paying for the time to get vaccinated if the associate goes offsite. AMS has held (5) vaccination clinics, opening them up to surrounding companies within our communities.
Staffing:
*A wide range of companies are having staffing challenges due to COVID, and AMS continues to do our best to recruit, work with agencies, and welcome friends and family.
*We are starting earlier in our recruitment efforts as peak season for our clients will likely start earlier and spread out over a longer period of time (which we encourage!).
*With recruiting of new associates comes training, and we are gearing up for training, and working with our valued clients when appropriate.
Transportation:
Freight challenges across the country, from small parcel carriers, post office, LTL and containers have continued to be an issue. We are adding carriers such as Laser Ship (East), GLS (West), Pitney Bowes and EasyPost, and we hope to have contracts plus integrations in place to launch before peak.
For a more comprehensive and detailed report on global transportation, please see our recent interview with John Bevacqua, VP of Logistics, on Holiday Shipping and Transportation.
We continue to uphold our commitments as a B-Corporation to be ‘Good for the World’ by adhering to our Mission Statement: “At AMS, we recognize that profit and growth are not goals unto themselves, but merely outcomes of uncompromised attention to our customer, our organization, our community, our environment and ourselves.”
