The warehouse has never looked better. Modern facilities, ergonomic solutions, and well-designed break rooms. But at the same time, research shows that the psychosocial work environment has deteriorated as automation has increased. Ebba Eriksson Ahre, a researcher at Lund University of Technology, has spent the past year studying how warehouse workers are actually faring.
One paradox she often encounters in her research is that warehouse workers are feeling increasingly unwell, despite significant investments in good lighting, natural light, and well-designed break areas.
“A lot of effort has been put into the surrounding environment—pleasant lunchrooms, nice facilities. But the actual work itself—and how it’s organized and managed—hasn’t received as much attention,” she says.
Together with her colleague Joakim Kembro, Ebba has spent several years studying Swedish retail warehouses, with funding from the Swedish Trade Council. Over the past year, she has conducted two studies on well-being in highly automated warehouses: first, interviews with logistics and warehouse managers as well as representatives from automation suppliers, followed by focus groups with warehouse employees and interviews with team leaders in warehouses with different types of automation.
Lonely, repetitive, and stagnant
The picture that emerges is clear. When automation takes over the physical and cognitive tasks—transportation, decision-making, the pace—the employee is left alone at their workstation with repetitive and isolated work. The system sets the pace. The scope for personal initiative shrinks.
“You mainly interact with a screen. You’re stationary and tied to a workstation. Cognitive decision-making and problem-solving are transferred to the system. It becomes very monotonous, and employees feel they have less control over their time,” Ebba notes.
It is not the physical work environment that has deteriorated—quite the opposite. There is less heavy lifting, and walking distances have become shorter. But this is also part of the problem. The things that used to provide natural breaks—social interactions in the hallway, variety in movement—have disappeared. What remains is inactivity and loneliness.
Rotation – a solution that creates new problems
A common strategy for dealing with monotony is rotation—allowing employees to switch workstations on a regular basis. But Ebba’s research shows that this solution can easily create just as many problems as it solves.
– In warehouses with high turnover, employees feel like they never really get good at anything. This leads to a skills gap because they don’t have time to develop in-depth knowledge of a specific workstation, and no one becomes a ”superuser.” “You also feel lonely and isolated because you don’t have time to build a sense of teamwork with your closest colleagues when you’re constantly rotating,” she says.
And it doesn't affect everyone equally. Agency workers, who are already in a more vulnerable position, are rarely assigned to the more skilled roles:
– They get to handle the repetitive, boring tasks. Job rotation is a solution to some problems, but it creates others, and that’s not exactly easy to solve.
Breaks as a Measure of Well-Being
One detail emerged from the focus groups that Ebba highlights as particularly telling: how the system handles a situation where an employee needs to take a short break.
– In the warehouses where employees were happiest, the system was set up so that they could take a break without causing chaos. You didn’t have to call a team leader to get a replacement. It might sound trivial, but it gave a sense of control—knowing that you didn’t have to work at full capacity all the time but could manage your own time more effectively,” she explains.
In a warehouse with the opposite setup—where taking a break required an organizational step—the employees instead described a feeling of being trapped. You work three hours straight in the system and can’t leave your station without setting off a chain reaction. So it’s not just about the type of work you do, but about how the system is designed and how the work is measured.
Individual, reasonable performance evaluation
Another issue that was discussed at length in the focus groups was performance measurement. The managers’ view—that measuring performance at the group level would reduce the pressure on individuals—was not shared by the employees themselves.
“They wanted their achievements to be visible and for it to be clear that they had done a good job. But it’s about the metrics being reasonable—that you can meet them without having to skip your break—and ideally, that you’re evaluated over a longer period of time, not hour by hour,” says Ebba.
There is also a widespread belief among managers that some employees actually enjoy repetitive, isolated work—that it suits certain personalities. Ebba encountered this view repeatedly. But when she asked if there was any data to back up the claim, it was consistently lacking.
– That was a recurring comment from management. But we asked if they had conducted any systematic follow-up, and they hadn’t. In the focus groups, the picture was different. There may be days when you’d rather just put on your headphones and be left alone, but that’s not the same as being comfortable with a lack of control, not feeling included, and never having any variety.
The Team Leader's Untapped Potential
One of the clearest conclusions from the studies concerns the role of team leaders. Both employees and managers agree: team leaders have great potential to strengthen social cohesion in highly automated warehouses where workers might otherwise feel lonely and isolated. But today, they are often overburdened with other tasks.
– They are responsible for everything from rehabilitation cases and troubleshooting to follow-up and personnel issues. The softer, social aspects aren’t prioritized—and that’s fundamentally a management issue. It’s about giving team leaders the right training and resources so they can also take responsibility for the social context at work,” says Ebba.
Equally important is the physical design of the workstations. How could they have been designed to foster a sense of community—perhaps even to enable people to work as a team rather than alone at their own screens? This is largely a matter for automation suppliers—and Ebba believes that this question needs to be asked much earlier in the process than is currently the case.
The People in Tomorrow's Warehouse
Right now, Ebba and Joakim Kembro are working on compiling the results from this fall’s focus groups and interviews. But their sights are already set on the future—on a research question that feels increasingly urgent as technology advances at a rapid pace: What will the human role in the warehouse actually be once the next generation of automation is in place?
– It’s not unreasonable to think that many of the tasks people perform today will disappear. But that raises new questions: What is actually worth automating, and what should people continue to do? And how do you design a warehouse from the ground up—not as an afterthought—in a way that ensures the people working there actually feel good? Those are the questions we want to explore next,” she says.
”Well-being must not be an afterthought”
The research community has been moving in the right direction. Greater emphasis has been placed on the employee perspective and well-being. However, the dominance of an efficiency- and business-oriented perspective remains evident.
– What’s clear is that we can’t let well-being be an afterthought. It’s about ensuring that employees feel included and heard, that they have some control over their time, and that their knowledge is put to good use. That they get to have a say and make a difference. That’s what creates well-being at work, no matter how much automation there is around us,” Ebba concludes.
Text and interview by Marika Karlöf
