Jess's first 6 months at the warehouse - what's been going on?
Jess shares her thoughts on what has been going on in her first 6 months as Warehouse Manager
My First 6 months at the warehouse.
As part of my induction to The Welcome Centre, I spent my first week up at our main centre, Lord Street, getting to grips with what the core of our operation entailed, seeing the intricacies and anomalies that we embrace and deal with on a daily basis. This helped me get a better idea of how I was going to organise the warehouse so that the two sites worked in harmony and could support each other.
I then set about getting to know our lovely warehouse team (such a hardworking, light-hearted and fun bunch) as well as making some changes to the warehouse layout, operation and communication between our two sites.
The warehouse now makes up toiletry and cleaning packs as well as decanting some of our larger products. This better controls the flow of these through the charity as well as alleviates the pressures on (What I am sure we can all agree is a very congested) Lord Street.
Not long after my stationing at the warehouse, we had the misfortune of being flooded (due to a combination of uncharacteristically high levels of rain and a blockage in the nearby water system). The team’s reaction to this was fantastic. A group of volunteers gathered on that Monday morning, donning welly boots and gloves and as the saying goes ‘many hands make light work’ definitely applied that day-albeit a little mucky! (thanks again folks).
Despite the little setback we kept on powering through, full speed ahead here, with physical donations decreasing and the demand only set to increase, we have become more reliant on using our financial donations to buy the items for our packs in bulk.
I have been developing better ways to manage our stock, which has led to chats with some of the Trustees about a stock management system.
I’ve been told that the warehouse is more organised than it has ever been, even though we are moving nearly double the stock on a daily basis than we were when I started 6 months ago.
I work with Emma, our Fundraising Manager to try and mitigate the risks of us running low on items for our packs by sourcing new suppliers and developing working relationships with local stores to keep us topped up. It's going to be a hard winter ahead of us while the fuel crisis has us in its grasp.
If you have donations to give, then you can find Jess at our warehouse which is open 10 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday at Unit 10-11 Queens Mill Industrial Estate, Queen's Mill Road, Lockwood, HD1 3RR.