Humans in Digital Logistics: Interview and Focus Group Data, 2022-2025

The Humans in Digital Logistics (HuLog) project investigates the role of digital technologies in reshaping work and employment conditions in warehouses in Europe (across Poland, Germany, Belgium and the UK), in view of identifying guiding principles for a more human-centred and socially sustainable digital warehousing.

An essential condition for building a more efficient and resilient European logistics is the improvement of the poor work and employment conditions today prevalent in this sector. The technologies that ensure an as- smooth-as-possible integration of workers into logistics processes, from online purchase to goods delivery, fundamentally shape work and employment in ways that are too often harmful to workers (e.g. through work intensification, health and safety concerns, high turnover rates, increased surveillance).

Building on the extant knowledge on the key role of digital technologies in shaping work and employment conditions in logistics, this project innovates by approaching technology as essential to envisioning any improvement of work and employment conditions in logistics. More specifically, HuLog investigates the key role of digital technologies in shaping work and employment conditions in warehouses across Europe in view of making them more human-centred and socially sustainable. The project is structured around three main objectives:

Objective 1: To gain an in-depth understanding of how digital warehouse management systems shape workers’ lived experience of the warehouse work.

Objective 2: To document and theorise the role of warehouse management systems in co-shaping companies’ human resource management strategies affecting work and employment conditions.

Objective 3: To derive an analytical framework comprising guiding principles for envisioning policy fostering human-centred and socially sustainable digital warehousing.

This collection includes interview data from the UK (UKRI-funded) branch of the broader European project, encompassing 69 interviews with 92 research respondents.