DC Velocity - May 2012

If you’re looking to boost your pay, our survey results indicate there may be some steps you can take to increase your earning power. They are as follows:

▪ Move to a bigger company. As Exhibit 2 indicates, larger companies (particularly those with over 5,000 employees) tend to pay higher salaries. (To provide as accurate a comparison as possible, Exhibit 2 only looks at the average salary for managers, as nearly half of all respondents are managers.)

▪ Take a job that reaches outside the distribution center.

While 66 percent of respondents said they had direct or indirect management control or influence over ware-housing/distribution center operations, this was not the path to the big bucks. Those who reported having responsibility for warehousing or distribution center operations have the lowest average salary by job responsibility (see Exhibit 3).

▪ Develop specialized skills. On the other side of the spectrum, those who had management control or influence over import/export operations reported the highest salaries. Rider says this isn’t surprising. “Government regulation, terrorism, and Homeland Security continue to compel a certain amount of knowledge and specialization. But the number of people who have that knowledge is limited,” she explains.

Other specialized skills in high demand include international supply chain experience, lean management, and FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture validation expertise, Rider says. She adds that employers are also seeking people who have proficiency with warehouse management systems.

The survey also showed that those responsible for fleet operations out-earned most of their peers. Rider suspects that rising fuel prices and growing capacity concerns have made companies more willing to pay for expertise in this area.

▪ Stick around. If you haven’t achieved your target salary yet, you might just need a few more years of experience. Responses to the salary survey show that in general, the more experience you have in logistics, the higher your salary—particularly for those who have more than 20 years of experience. The one anomaly seems to be respondents who have less than five years of experience in logis-