Recruiting for production roles has become materially harder over the past few years, and the difficulty is not evenly distributed. It falls hardest on the roles that are physically demanding, and on sites away from large population centres.
This article looks at what the difficulty actually costs, and at an option that is often not considered because it sits under a capital budget rather than a recruitment one.
Why the labour pool has changed
Three things have happened at once.
The first is a change in migration patterns. Following the UK’s departure from the EU, freedom of movement ended and the immigration system moved to a points-based model with salary and skill thresholds that most entry-level production roles do not meet. The pool of candidates that many manufacturers had drawn on for years is therefore no longer available in the same way.
The second is geography. Manufacturing sites are frequently located on industrial estates outside towns, or in rural areas where land was available. Where public transport is limited, the practical catchment for a shift-work role is restricted to people who can drive and are willing to commute, which in some regions is a small pool competing with warehousing, logistics and retail employers who are recruiting from the same one.
The third is that the work itself competes poorly. A role involving repeated lifting for a full shift is harder to fill than a comparably paid role that does not, and it is harder to retain people in once filled.
The result is familiar: vacancies that stay open, reliance on agency cover at premium rates, and turnover concentrated in the same handful of positions.
What a production role actually costs
Recruitment difficulty is normally discussed in terms of time and frustration rather than money, which makes it hard to compare against any alternative. The figure below is the one to put alongside a capital cost.
Salary is not the cost of a role. The full cost of one operator, on one shift, works out approximately as follows:
|
Cost element |
Basis |
Annual cost |
|
Gross salary |
One full-time operator on approximately the National Living Wage |
£26,437 |
|
Employer National Insurance |
15% on earnings above the £5,000 secondary threshold |
£3,216 |
|
Holiday cover |
One month of cover per person per year, at the same cost |
£2,471 |
|
Pension, sick pay, recruitment, HR administration, training, bonuses and management time |
Add 20%, or agency fees where agency staff are used |
£6,425 |
|
Total cost of one operator, one shift |
£38,549 |
Round figures: approaching £40,000 a year for a single operator on a single shift. Manufacturers we work with consistently report all-in costs at or around that level, and higher where agency staff are used or where shift premiums apply.
Two adjustments are worth making for your own site. Smaller employers may be able to offset part of the National Insurance cost through the Employment Allowance. Night and weekend working normally attracts a premium, so a 24/7 operation’s per-head cost is higher than the figure above rather than simply a multiple of it.
The comparison that is rarely made
A standardised prebuilt robotic palletiser is openly priced from £57,900 + VAT. Set against the figure above, that is less than eighteen months of a single operator on a single shift.
The comparison scales with the shift pattern, and this is where it becomes decisive. A role that is covered around the clock is not one salary; it is four.
|
Shift pattern |
Annual cost of the role |
Payback on £57,900 |
|
One shift |
£38,549 |
Approximately 18 months |
|
Two shifts |
£77,098 |
Approximately 9 months |
|
Three shifts |
£115,647 |
Approximately 6 months |
|
24/7, four shift teams |
£154,196 or more |
Under 5 months |
These figures count labour cost alone. They exclude the production increase that usually accompanies automation, the reduction in transit damage from consistent pallet quality, and the manual handling exposure that disappears when the lifting stops. Counting those normally shortens the payback further.
What this does and does not change
It does not mean replacing your workforce. In practice the people currently stacking pallets are redeployed to work that is easier to recruit for and easier to keep people in — line supervision, quality, changeover and covering multiple lines rather than one position.
What it removes is the vacancy. The role that is persistently hard to fill stops needing to be filled, and the recruitment effort can go into positions where a person is genuinely the right answer.
It also removes the variability. A palletising cell runs at the same rate in the eighth hour as in the first, does not take breaks, and is unaffected by an absence at short notice.
Whether it applies to your site
The case is strongest where several of the following are true:
- One or more end-of-line roles are persistently vacant or covered by agency staff
- The site operates more than one shift
- The work involves repeated lifting for the length of a shift
- The site is not close to a large labour market
- Turnover in the role is high, so training cost recurs
Palletising is usually where this is examined first, because it is the heaviest repetitive manual task on most lines and the least disruptive place to automate — the cell sits at the end of the process rather than within it. The reasoning is set out in what to automate first, and the manual handling case in manual handling risks in palletising.
Working out the figure for your own line
The numbers above are illustrative. The ones that matter are yours, and they depend on your shift pattern, your current cover arrangements and your line rate.
We provide payback, ROI, OEE and intangible-benefits calculators and will work through them with you, so the case can be put internally with real figures rather than industry averages. Leasing and hire options are included with every quote; in most cases the savings exceed the lease payments from the point of installation.
We will visit your site free of charge and produce a 3D CAD layout of a system in your own space before any commitment is made.
Call 01223 499488 or book a free site visit.
Figures current at the time of writing and based on 2026/27 employer National Insurance rates. They should be reviewed against current rates before being used in a business case.
