SnackMagic’s warehouse has many of your typical goals: fulfill orders on time, improve operational costs, and create a safe, positive, and productive environment. But SnackMagic Co-founder Zaeem Shahid’s approach to staffing and managing his warehouse team is anything but typical. He’s found a formula for finding and retaining a great team of workers, and Instawork has been a pillar of that winning staffing strategy.
The challenge
Develop a formula for finding (lots of) great workers
SnackMagic delivers customizable snack boxes that users can build from over 1,000 varieties of snacks on their e-commerce site. The personalized nature of each box means warehouse operations have to be organized and accurate — but for Shahid, attitude is important, too. To fill around 5,000 orders a day and keep shipments on time in their 50k-square-foot warehouse, SnackMagic requires anywhere from 60 to 100 workers per day to handle picking and packing, receiving, and inventory management.
But Shahid and his team don’t just see that number as headcount — those are individuals, and everyone has the potential to contribute to the business’s success.
The solution
Achieving maximum warehouse productivity with 90% temporary workers
The aha moment was when he realized that a signal of quality was whether or not they already had a job. Instead of focusing on how temporary staffing solutions could work for him, he prioritized what people cared about. So Shahid flipped the script.
That opened the floodgates for amazing people. Within months, he worked with enough Instawork Pros to build up a roster of 10x the number of workers he typically needs so he can call on them whenever a shift opens up.
Whereas most operations will maintain around 30% temporary workers outside of peak times, Shahid and his team realized that, with the right people, they could use temp workers almost exclusively, and get even better outcomes. With around 90% of his warehouse team now temporary workers, they’re going all in and getting incredible results.
To proactively keep these great workers happy, and coming back for more shifts, Shahid and his team:
- Keep training simple & scalable: Training isn’t overly extensive, which makes it easier to onboard new workers and find where they’ll be a good fit. This keeps the barrier to get started low, and the process easy to scale as needed.
- Make shifts flexible: Offering shorter shifts (4 hours a shift, rather than a full 8 hours) helps to attract top-quality workers who have other commitments.
- Allow Pros to work as much as they want: Someone can pick up two shifts and work the whole day, or pick up just one morning or afternoon shift per day. By allowing workers more control over their schedule, Shahid widens his pool of available workers.
- Reward Pros for productivity: Shahid uses a reward structure that’s doubled his team’s productivity. Using an app that assigns work and tracks activity, he gives rewards that amount to an extra $5/hour to anyone who meets the threshold — and 80% of them do.
His biggest takeaway: when workers require less oversight and are more productive, labor costs pale in comparison to the gains.
“We had done the math and with the increase in productivity, determined it was worth paying workers meaningfully more," Shahid said. "Later, we discovered the gains exceeded our expectations.”
Instawork Professionals love the working setup too:
- “Well paid job, good leaders!” - Instawork Pro Paula G.
- “Very helpful & organized environment… Would definitely work here again.” - Instawork Pro Mara F.
- “The team there is extremely welcoming and attentive.” - Instawork Pro Justin H.
Why Instawork is critical to SnackMagic’s strategy
Shahid said Instawork has been instrumental in SnackMagic’s warehousing success: "Without Instawork, our warehouse staffing strategy would have been impossible to do.”
Instawork has helped create this highly-productive, low-overhead operational structure with:
- Access to vetted, high-quality workers: Pre-vetting is handled by Instawork, so Shahid’s team can spend less time screening and more time doing what they do best. The SnackMagic operations team loves that you can see profiles upfront, especially the feedback that gives them a sense of attitude and soft skills. “I can’t create this environment without motivated, hard-working people,” he noted.
- A platform to easily manage their worker pipeline: Instawork makes it easy for the operations team to collaboratively leave ratings and feedback for each worker after every shift. Good fits are added to their bench for future availability, or removed if things don’t work out.
- A big enough labor pool to cast a wide net: With Instawork, scaling his team is easier than ever for Shahid. When the operations team needs to add to their workforce, they will often post a shift for 10 new people and evaluate their performance. This lets them see who’s a good fit after the first shift, and their roster can always be growing.
The result
A productive environment, happy workers, & a better bottom line
With 400 Professionals on their roster, SnackMagic’s operations team never has to worry about having enough workers to fill big orders — even when volume changes.
The reliability they get with Instawork has had a ripple effect, reducing operating costs overall. About 75% of the Instawork Pros SnackMagic has booked end up working multiple shifts. This makes them self-sufficient, knowledgeable, and able to punch in and get to work without needing to be micromanaged.
“When you create a win-win environment, you create a self-managed environment,” Shahid said.
As a result, SnackMagic ended up needing 3 fewer full-time hires than they projected, including a warehouse manager, onsite security guard, and HR manager.
“With Instawork, we’ve been able to grow [and] improve productivity, all without extra admin overhead,” Shahid added.
And with plans to expand to a new facility that is 4 to 5 times larger in the summer of ‘21, SnackMagic is ready for the growth their business is seeing.
