Case studies:

The client

New Zealand Couriers are New Zealand’s leading courier company, and have been helping Kiwis get their deliveries sorted for over 50 years – right around the country and the globe. 

New Zealand Couriers has depots all around the Country with Auckland sites Parnell, Penrose and West Auckland being the most frequent users of Sidekicker, hiring for warehouse assistant roles, freight handlers and courier processing staff. Jarrod King, Penrose Branch Manager, describes the challenges with warehouse staffing before adopting Sidekicker as their warehouse staffing agency 

The challenges

The courier industry faces the constant challenge of forecasting labour requirements due to its highly dynamic nature. 

Whilst there are obvious seasonal peaks for Courier companies such as the run into Christmas, other unpredictable factors also impact the volume of packages going through the depos, and therefore influence daily staffing needs. 

Before adopting Sidekicker, some of the New Zealand Couriers Auckland depots faced several challenges with the traditional warehouse staffing agencies.

Inability to be agile around their staffing

The ability to scale the workforce up and down quickly and efficiently to meet the demands whilst also managing the staffing budgets is crucial to New Zealand Couriers, requiring flexibility and agility in adjusting warehouse staffing levels on a very last minute basis. 

New Zealand Couriers depots need to manage staffing in real time, which traditional temporary labour provider agencies often struggled with. Depots would often get notified the night before or the day of the shift of a rostered worker requiring Sick Leave and not being able to attend work, and therefore were often left scrambling given the traditional agencies couldn’t meet the short turnaround times. 

Frustration with the traditional engagement methods by traditional warehouse staffing agencies, and needing to make multiple calls or emails back-and-forth just to make a labour request was simply too slow to meet the New Zealand Couriers business needs. 

“I don't have the time to be trying to chase down an Account Manager on the phone just to book a staffing request, especially when it's often out of normal business hours and on tight turnarounds when we need staffing cover.”

Lack of control and low reliability

High-paced courier depots with teams working to strict deadlines require high-quality staff who can hit the ground running, but using traditional agencies New Zealand Couriers lacked control of the workers sent onsite, who were often not meeting the depots’ operational standards. 

They also found it difficult to have any consistency of the temporary workers who could build knowledge of how the individual depots are run and are available for ad hoc shifts, and therefore New Zealand Couriers required to constantly train new workers, affecting depot productivity. 

The solution

Multiple Auckland based New Zealand Couriers depots started using Sidekicker in early 2023, and have found the platform to directly address many of the challenges faced before. 

Self-service platform with short turnaround times

The ability to post shifts directly to pools of qualified Sidekicker workers 24/7 is a game changer for New Zealand Couriers, who find it to be a great fit with their business requirements and short turnaround requirements. 

Using Request Templates saved on their Sidekicker account, New Zealand Courier depots can easily get their job requests out to the Sidekicker Marketplace within minutes, allowing them to fill even same day requests to manage Sick Leave cover. 

This Sidekicker platform allows the depots to manage staffing efficiently without the need to chase down their Account Managers via phone and emails, minimising their admin burden. 

Control over hiring decisions

Each Sidekick’s detailed profile featuring experience, star ratings, and reliability score provides New Zealand Couriers with enhanced visibility in selecting workers for their shifts, and the peace of mind they’ll receive high-quality staff.

The Sidekick profiles also display all companies they’ve worked with, including shifts worked at the New Zealand Courier depots along with the specific star ratings from those shifts. Previously worked Sidekicks have also been saved onto Talent Pools, meaning New Zealand Couriers can push future requests directly onto those workers. 

The results

High fulfilment rate and increased speed to fill

On average, New Zealand Couriers see applications flowing into their requests in less than 1 hour after a shift is posted, and over the past 12-months they’ve seen a fulfilment rate of over 70% of shifts posted onto Sidekicker, even though a lot of their requests are reasonably last minute. 

During this period New Zealand Couriers has had 25 individual Sidekicks working across their depots each month, often working multiple shifts, with 46 working in their busiest month.

Given the dynamic nature of their business New Zealand Couriers are often posting shifts early the morning of the day they require the workers, and Sidekicker has been able to fill the vast majority of these shifts and maintain 70%+ fulfilment rates even with only a few hours notice. 

Increased quality and staff retention

Gaining transparency on workers makes it easy for the New Zealand Couriers to spot the workers who will operate well in their environment, and having the control over the hiring decisions, they’ve seen an increase in their temporary staff quality and reliability.  

New Zealand Couriers have a pool of Sidekicks working frequently at their depots, and they can now prioritise posting requests to those workers first, knowing they’ll be able to be productive immediately upon arriving at the depot. For even shorter turnaround times, New Zealand Couriers may use the Auto Hire feature when posting to their previous Sidekicks, meaning the worker can directly accept the job and arrive onsite without any further admin requirements. 

This consistency of workforce has also improved worker reliability, with withdrawal rates reducing by 45% in the last 5 months compared to the 5 months prior.

“Sidekicker has always made it quick and easy to manage our requirements for casual staff and helped us to maintain our service while providing great visibility into what shifts and who we are bringing into our business”

Cost savings

Running a cost effective operation is critical for New Zealand Couriers. In addition to the significant benefits delivered by the Sidekicker platform, they have also found that the pricing model is more economical than any other traditional warehouse staffing agency they’ve used before.