Over the past decade, online retail has expanded significantly, driving demand for fulfilment warehouses that process large volumes of small, varied orders. Given the size and growing importance of the UK e-commerce fulfilment sector, interest in exactly how work is organised within the industry - and its implications for employee involvement and participation - have grown too.

This was the starting point for our major ESRC research project that has been looking at the warehouse industry. For instance, in one particular study within the project we interviewed senior managers in 35 UK-based small and medium-sized third-party logistics fulfilment companies, looking at how labour processes were organised in the sector. The study focused on UK-owned firms operating in a market shaped by Amazon’s dominance, especially in delivery speeds and customer expectations, and asked whether smaller fulfilment firms copy Amazon’s organisational model or develop their own approaches to organising work.

Frontier of robotics?

Public and policy debates have often predicted that warehousing would become a major frontier of robotics and automation. High-profile examples of automated logistics systems, especially those linked to Amazon and Ocado, reinforced expectations among many academic and media commentators that warehouse work would soon be transformed by robots and advanced automation.

Our research however into smaller fulfilment firms showed that direct imitation of Amazon’s labour process practices firms was limited. The firms studied lacked the scale, technical infrastructure and analytical capacity to implement highly data-driven systems such as individual productivity metrics or algorithm-based performance monitoring.

Managers argued that such approaches would yield limited benefits given the variability of orders in their warehouses. Performance was instead assessed by managers through broader service-level agreements and team outputs rather than through individual metrics. Robotic automation was rare among the studied firms and its potential for adoption low. High costs, uncertain returns, building limitations and varied products made robotic systems impractical.

Instead, what we found was that smaller firms rely on warehouse management systems to arrange human worker tasks, picking routes and inventory, and that the sector is characterised by a hybrid model combining software-based coordination with flexible labour. Amazon’s influence is felt within the sector chiefly through market forces, particularly expectations for rapid delivery, rather than through the direct diffusion of its labour process practices.

Employee voice

The findings from our study into smaller fulfilment firms also showed that even though human workers remain essential to executing and adapting operational processes, highly developed employee voice systems among smaller companies were rare. Most improvements were driven by operational managers, with limited opportunities for workers to participate in decision-making. Thus, employee involvement existed but was unstructured, manager-led and improvised, lacking institutionalised mechanisms for participation.

So how can worker voice be strengthened in the warehouse industry? Another study within our ESRC project included interviews with workers and supervisors in a range of UK warehouses of different sizes (e.g., third party logistics, online retail, retail) and highlights practice recommendations that line managers and senior managers can adopt to strengthen and benefit from worker voice. The recommendations break down into two broad areas:

One: Evaluate how individual and collective channels can be combined 

The data from the second study shows some scattered examples of voice in UK warehouses. But overall, workers usually stated that they had very limited impact on organisational decision making, despite the formal and informal voice channels available. We found that combining individual voice with collective voice channels can strengthen worker voice and improve work experiences. In our sample, the voice channels available to workers were usually individual/team based direct voice channels (e.g. one on one meetings with managers, employee surveys, digital apps), with some use of collective channels such as unions and employee forums.

The new union rules in the Employment Rights Act provide an opportunity for organisations to consider how they can begin working with unions or working better with unions. In our data there were examples of collective bargaining over issues such as pay and work scheduling. In some cases, supervisors worked with trade union representatives to resolve day-to-day matters more informally and efficiently.

Two: Review the role of worker voice in performance management practices 

In the second study we found that performance management practices were adopted and regularly discussed by workers, and that performance management expectations could impact injuries, accidents, errors and turnover intentions. Yet, workers very rarely had influence over performance management practices, including how they were rewarded for meeting or exceeding expectations.

A range of performance management practices were adopted. For instance, workers could have explicit hourly targets, where digital technologies such as digital scanners or voice picking systems monitored the number of items they scanned in real-time. More informal performance management approaches were also adopted that did not rely on real-time monitoring but which were productive. Significantly, we found that involving workers in how their performance was evaluated and rewarded can help organisations ensure fairness and improve retention.

Future research

Further research is now needed into how voice practices are experienced by different groups of workers in warehousing. For example, we found that workers on non-standard employment contracts such as agency workers and temporary workers can fear the potential implications of speaking up. Meanwhile, another area that also requires further attention is the skills that senior managers and line managers in non-union organisations need to develop in order to work effectively with unions.

Dr Emma Hughes, University of Manchester

For more information about the project contact [email protected] 

March 2026

Researchers involved in the project:

Niall Cullinane is a Professor of Organisation, Work and Leadership at Queen’s University Belfast

Emma Hughes is a Senior Lecturer in Employment Studies at the University of Manchester and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute

Tony Dundon is a Professor of Human Resource Management and Employment Relations at the University of Limerick/University of Manchester and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute

Debra Howcroft is a Professor of Technology and Organisation at the University of Manchester and a member of the Work and Equalities Institute

Conor McCabe is a Research Fellow at Queen’s University Belfast

 This project was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ES/W009684/1).