- 6 min reading
The first busy weekend is only part of the test. For warehouses, the harder challenge is maintaining capacity through weeks of elevated demand, from the Black Friday build-up to Christmas deliveries and January returns.
A plan can cover the opening surge and still struggle later. Temporary workers may need more support than expected. Experienced employees may have spent several weeks covering gaps with overtime. And the extra hours available at the start of peak may become harder to sustain as fatigue and working-time limits affect the schedule.
The challenge is keeping enough productive capacity available throughout the season.
For warehouse operators, that means looking beyond how many people are on the rota to understand what those teams can realistically deliver, week by week.
Plan for how capacity changes through peak
A peak plan often starts with forecast volume, an expected productivity rate, and the number of people needed to deliver it. That is a useful starting point, but capacity changes once the plan meets the warehouse floor.
New starters build experience at different rates. Experienced employees divide their time between operational work and coaching. Absence, turnover, and changes in availability affect coverage. Additional hours also need to fit within working-time and rest requirements.
A weekly capacity plan makes those changes easier to anticipate. It shows the productive hours available by site, role, and skill, alongside the assumptions behind them.
That gives managers a more useful question to ask: will we have the capacity to handle demand in each week of peak, and where might gaps emerge?
Three pressures deserve particular attention.
1. New starters need time and support to become productive
Bringing temporary workers on site adds potential capacity. How quickly that becomes productive capacity depends on the work, the individual, and the support available.
A 2024 study published in IFAC-PapersOnLine followed 19 temporary workers who were new to order picking in a retail warehouse, across more than 22,600 storage location visits. Average performance improved with experience, but workers differed in their starting points and the pace of their progress.
For planners, the implication is practical: one productivity assumption for every new starter can hide significant differences within a team.
Coaching also takes time. When an experienced employee supports a new colleague, some of their own operational capacity needs to be accounted for. If that support is missing from the plan, the schedule can overstate what both groups will deliver.
Turnover adds another variable. A replacement joining halfway through peak needs their own induction and learning period, even if the overall headcount stays the same.
What to do
Use data from previous peaks to build productivity assumptions by week of experience, role, and task. Where possible, bring new starters in early enough to learn before the busiest shifts.
Schedule coaching time explicitly, and give new starters work that matches their training and experience. Agree with agencies how you will maintain continuity and manage replacements.
The aim is to make onboarding part of the capacity plan, with time and support allocated from the outset.
2. Repeated overtime leaves less room to respond
When demand exceeds available capacity, overtime can help close a short-term gap. The difficulty comes when that gap returns every week.
The same experienced employees may be asked to stay late, cover additional shifts, and support new colleagues. As that continues, the plan becomes increasingly dependent on their availability and willingness to work extra hours.
It also becomes more exposed to fatigue and absence.
The Health and Safety Executive’s guidance on managing shift work highlights the importance of shift length, consecutive shifts, overtime, and recovery time. These factors need to be considered together when planning a sustained busy period.
If an experienced employee becomes unavailable, the effect can extend beyond their own output. The team may also lose someone who can coach new starters, handle complex tasks, or move between operational areas.
That can create another gap for the remaining team to cover.
What to do
Review overtime by individual, skill, and team, alongside total labour spend. Look for repeated reliance on the same people and check whether recovery time is being protected.
Build alternatives into the plan before they are needed. Depending on the operation, these could include cross-training, a pool of employees who want additional shifts, or support from another site.
Overtime remains a useful option. Planning other sources of capacity helps keep it available when an unexpected problem occurs.
3. Working-time limits affect how long extra hours can continue
A schedule needs to account for both immediate shift requirements and working hours across the relevant reference period.
This matters during a long peak because additional hours accumulate. A pattern that works for a short period may need to change if elevated demand continues.
The rules differ by market, and local agreements, exceptions, and night-work requirements can also affect the schedule.
United Kingdom
The general limit is 48 hours a week on average, normally calculated over 17 weeks. Eligible workers can voluntarily opt out, but an opt-out should not be treated as a permanent source of additional capacity: workers can cancel it subject to the applicable notice period.
For planners, the priority is to understand each employee’s hours across the reference period and check the effect of proposed overtime before adding it to the schedule.
Netherlands
The general rules allow up to 12 hours per shift and 60 hours in a week, with lower average limits over longer periods: 55 hours a week over four weeks and 48 over 16 weeks. Collective agreements or company arrangements can affect some requirements.
A high weekly maximum therefore needs to be considered alongside the averages that apply throughout peak.
Germany
The general rule limits the working day to eight hours. This can extend to 10 hours if average working time returns to eight hours per working day within six calendar months or 24 weeks.
Longer days during peak therefore need to be considered alongside working hours across the wider reference period.
Across all three markets, moving an employee between sites does not reset their working hours. Planners need a shared view of the person’s hours, skills, and availability wherever they work.
What to do
Include working-time checks in each scheduling decision. Review proposed shifts against hours already worked, planned hours, rest requirements, and the rules that apply to the employee.
For multi-site operations, make that information visible across the network. A site may have a coverage gap, but the person available to fill it still needs sufficient time and capacity to do so.
Four ways to build a more resilient peak plan
The strongest opportunity is to connect demand, productivity, and employee availability throughout the season. These four practices give managers a clearer view of where to act.
Build a weekly capacity forecast
Translate expected volume into productive hours by role and skill. Include assumptions for new-starter productivity, coaching, absence, and turnover.
Then test the plan against a few realistic changes:
- What happens if new starters take another week to reach the expected productivity rate?
- What happens if volume stays elevated into January?
- Which tasks become difficult to cover if experienced employees are unavailable?
These checks help identify where additional training, earlier start dates, or more flexible coverage could make the greatest difference.
Protect time for onboarding
Allocate coaching time in the schedule and make it clear who is responsible for supporting new starters.
Match tasks to training and experience, and review progress regularly. Stable assignments can also help temporary workers build familiarity with the work and the team.
This gives managers a more realistic view of output while helping new colleagues become confident in their roles.
Make cross-site support practical
Where sites have different demand patterns, sharing trained employees can help address gaps.
That requires more than a list of available names. Managers need to know who has the right skills, who is willing and able to travel, and whether the proposed shifts fit their working hours and rest requirements.
Agree those arrangements before the busiest period, so support can be organised quickly when demand changes.
Review actual performance against the plan
Compare expected and actual productivity by shift, operational area, and experience level, using warehouse operational data alongside workforce information.
If new starters are progressing more slowly than expected, investigate early. They may need different training, clearer instructions, or more consistent assignments.
Review hours and coverage at the same time. An output gap covered by repeated overtime is still a gap that needs attention.
The value of monitoring is the action it enables: adjusting training, moving skills, offering additional shifts, or revising the plan while there is still time to respond.
Where workforce management fits
Warehouse systems show what work needs to be done and how the operation is performing. Workforce management helps translate that demand into a staffing plan, bringing skills, availability, labour costs, and scheduling rules into the decision.
For managers, the benefit is being able to see where coverage needs to change and update schedules as conditions develop.
Quinyx supports demand forecasting and scheduling, helping teams match employees to demand while accounting for skills, availability, and configured working-time rules. Employees can also share their availability and claim open shifts through the mobile app, giving planners more visibility when they need to adjust coverage.
Flink, the on-demand grocery service operating across Germany, the Netherlands, and France, provides an example of how faster planning can help. With AI-powered schedule optimisation in Quinyx, it reduced scheduling time by up to 80%, from a full week to a day.
During a sustained peak, faster replanning gives managers more time to respond when volume changes or available capacity falls short.
Check whether your plan can hold through the whole season
If peak is already underway, start with three checks:
- Productivity: are new starters progressing at the rate your plan assumed?
- Resilience: how much of your coverage depends on the same employees working extra hours?
- Working time: how will planned shifts affect each person’s hours and rest requirements over the coming weeks?
Use the answers to update the remaining weeks of the plan, including the returns period.
A successful peak depends on having the right skills and productive hours available throughout the season. Making those assumptions visible gives managers a better chance of spotting pressure early and responding before it becomes a persistent coverage problem.
Our warehousing and logistics guide explores how workforce management can help operators plan for demand, manage labour costs, and coordinate teams across sites.
