The UK base for DHL is at Heathrow – on the Bath Road where they employ several hundred staff. The HR Director was becoming very concerned about the costs of employing, retaining and recruiting good quality staff. Staff turnover was very high and employing good quality staff for any length of time was becoming increasingly difficult.

He was therefore interested in investigating the 'what if' scenario options of moving the office based staff just a few miles further from the airport to see what potential commercial advantages could be realised. We were asked to visit him and were selected to carry out the assignment.

• We decided the best way to compare the Heathrow staff catchment area was to plot 30 and 45 minute 'travel to work' (TTWA) contours – using GIS post code mapping technology – based on Heathrow and the two other main local towns of Staines and Woking.
• Using GIS we also plotted the home locations of all DHL staff to see how far staff actually travelled to get to work at Heathrow. It also enabled us to see how easy it might be for these same staff to sustain a daily commute to either Woking or Staines.
• The results showed that the overwhelming majority of the existing DHL staff could easily commute to work in Staines – and in fact the Staines TTWA captured more DHL staff than the Heathrow ttwa itself. But by comparison the Woking TTWA area captured very few DHL staff indeed.
• In addition we wanted to look at the other related issues of:-
• Salary comparisons within each ttwa against 20 existing DHL jobs
• Staff availability, typical age profiles, experience and qualifications
• The future availability of these people
• How do they typically travel to work
• Confirmation that Staines and Woking are within 60 minutes from Heathrow and within 10 miles of a motorway junction

Salary Comparisons:
We selected 20 benchmark salaries for key DHL job profiles and researched what the total wage bill would be for the same jobs in Staines and Woking. The results were almost identical in Staines (only 0.7% more) but Woking was certainly higher (at +4.5%).

Staff Availability, Experience and Qualifications:
We researched a total of eight major local employers and found that, in general, those further away from Heathrow fared better than those closer in. It appeared staff were certainly put off by the sheer weight of the traffic, hustle, bustle and hassle of working in the Heathrow area.

Future Availability of Staff:
The demographic data showed that the population growth in Woking was forecast to be +5.9% over the next 10 year period compared to Staines at +5.3% and Heathrow at +5%.

Other Issues:
We also obtained a copy of a publication entitled 'The West London Economy – An Overview' which contained a few interesting statements;

• The West London workforce is relatively unskilled
• One in ten local firms report operating costs here are a disadvantage
• Rents are higher than London's average and 61% over the British average
• We have a skills bottleneck and yet demand is increasing
• Some 500 companies are considering leaving the area next year

The Outcome:
We duly presented our conclusions to DHL (UK) and the HR Director was very pleased with the scope and depth of the report which he felt strongly pointed to the need for DHL to actively consider the commercial advantages of a move away from the Bath Road – and probably to Staines. However his Regional HQ in Brussels vetoed this idea and DHL remain on the Bath Road.