In trade and logistics, most vacancies arise not from growth but because people leave. In the study Mens&Werk in trade and logistics 2022, 77% of vacancies were replacements. If you want to reduce the staff shortage, keeping people therefore helps more than recruiting new ones.
In short
- At 77% of companies, vacancies arise because people leave. As long as outflow stays high, recruiting does not solve the shortage.
- Sickness absence is at its highest level in thirty years. Work pressure is the most frequently mentioned cause.
- Retention starts small: good onboarding, managers who keep leading and a development plan per employee.
In this article
- Why does recruiting more not solve the staff shortage?
- How tight is the labour market in trade and logistics now?
- Does investing in retention really work?
- Why is sickness absence rising, and what can you do about it?
- Is a higher salary enough to keep people?
- Why does strategic HR policy often stay on paper?
Why does recruiting more not solve the staff shortage?
Because most vacancies arise from people leaving, and not from growth. Every employee you recruit and then lose again creates a new vacancy. You are mopping the floor with the tap running.
The figures show this clearly. In the Mens&Werk 2022 study by evofenedex, ABN AMRO and Olympia, half of the companies said the number of vacancies had risen. In 77% of cases this was about replacing existing positions, in 67% about extra capacity and in 42% about new positions (evofenedex, ABN AMRO & Olympia, 2022). So replacement is the biggest source of vacancies.
Recruiting costs money and time, and the result is uncertain. As long as as many people leave as you bring in, the demand for staff stays just as high. The shortage only disappears when outflow falls. That is why retention, keeping your current employees, is a stronger lever than recruitment.
How tight is the labour market in trade and logistics now?
Less tight than in 2022, but still tense. In the first quarter of 2026 there were 91 vacancies for every 100 unemployed people. In 2022, when the report was published, the market was at its tightest.
Labour market tightness, the ratio between open vacancies and unemployed people, has decreased since that peak (CBS, 2026). In trade, transport and hospitality, the number of jobs even fell by 22,000 in the first quarter of 2026 compared with a year earlier (CBS, 2026). So the panic of 2022 has eased somewhat.
Yet the shortage has not been solved, and that is due to the ageing population. More people retire than young people join. For operational roles such as driver, logistics employee and planner, demand therefore remains high. The fact that the figure is falling somewhat does not change that underlying pattern.
Does investing in retention really work?
Yes, and there is solid research behind it. Work with enough resources, such as autonomy, support from the manager and opportunities to grow, leads to less dropout and to engaged employees who stay. That is not a matter of atmosphere, but of measurable psychology.
The best-known model behind this is the job demands-resources theory (JD-R). It divides work into two kinds of characteristics: job demands, such as workload and pace, and job resources, such as autonomy, support and development. High job demands wear people out and eventually lead to burnout. Too few resources cause people to disengage and leave (Bakker, Demerouti & Sanz-Vergel, 2023).
The key point for you as an employer: job resources absorb the job demands. Someone with a heavy working week keeps going longer if they have control over their work, are supported and can develop. So investing in those resources is not an extra. It is the direct lever to reduce absence and turnover.
Why is sickness absence rising, and what can you do about it?
Absence is high and moving in the wrong direction. In the first quarter of 2026, sickness absence among employees was 5.8%. That is above the average of 5.0% since 1996 and the highest level in thirty years (CBS, 2026).
Flu and colds are the most frequently given reason, but work itself also plays a large part. Of the employees who were absent in 2025, 23% said this was wholly or partly due to work. Work pressure is the most frequently mentioned cause (28%), and 9% mentioned mental health complaints, overstrain or burnout (CBS, 2026). In the transport and storage sector, the share of work-related absence is higher than average (CBS, 2026).
This creates a dangerous circle. Because of the staff shortage, the existing team is stretched to the limit. That high workload leads to absence, and that absence puts even more pressure on the people who are there. In this way the shortage feeds itself.
What can you do about it? Back to the JD-R model: work pressure is the job demand that exhausts. You reduce absence by easing that pressure and strengthening resources, with better planning, clear support from managers and room to recover. It is striking that absence at small companies is much lower than at large ones. Shorter lines of communication and more engagement seem to protect (CBS, 2026).
Is a higher salary enough to keep people?
No. Salary is needed to compete, but it does not keep people in the long term. Development, autonomy and a workable balance between work and private life weigh more heavily for retention.
Since 2022, salary has become more important in attracting staff, mainly because of inflation and higher energy costs. At the same time, a permanent contract became less decisive, and employers named a good working atmosphere as the most important condition for being attractive (evofenedex, ABN AMRO & Olympia, 2022). So money gets people over the line, but it is not what keeps them.
That fits the research on engagement. What binds people for a long time and gives them energy are the resources in the work: control, support and the chance to grow (Bakker, Demerouti & Sanz-Vergel, 2023). A pay rise without better work rarely solves a turnover problem.
Why does strategic HR policy often stay on paper?
Because the issues of the day win out over the plan. In 2022, 53% of companies with a mission and vision said their HR policy was aligned with it. But that link could hardly be seen in their actual policy (evofenedex, ABN AMRO & Olympia, 2022).
Strategic HR policy means that inflow, progression and outflow are arranged so that you have the right people in the right place, now and later. In practice it often does not happen. Time and capacity are the most frequently mentioned reasons why companies do not lay down a development or employability policy (evofenedex, ABN AMRO & Olympia, 2022). The urgent crowds out the important.
What does work is starting small. A big policy plan rarely reaches the finish line, but a few concrete steps do:
Serious onboarding
So that new people do not drop out again in the first weeks.
Managers who keep leading
Situational leadership helps managers keep leading and delegating, even under high pressure.
A personal development plan
Linked to the company's goals, so that growth and retention go together.
These are exactly the resources that keep people engaged, and they are steps you control yourself. The labour market has cooled somewhat since 2022, but the problem has not solved itself. Absence is at its highest point in thirty years and the population keeps ageing. In a market where most vacancies are replacements, the employee who works for you today is also the employee you need tomorrow.
Sources
- evofenedex, ABN AMRO & Olympia, Mens&Werk in trade and logistics 2022: HRM trends, November 2022. evofenedex.nl
- CBS, Labour market tightness (Labour market dashboard), figures first quarter 2026. cbs.nl
- CBS, Fewer vacancies in the first quarter of 2026, 30 April 2026. cbs.nl
- Bakker, A.B., Demerouti, E. & Sanz-Vergel, A., Job Demands-Resources Theory: Ten Years Later, Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 2023, 25–53. annualreviews.org
- CBS, Sickness absence in first quarter higher than the average of the past 30 years, 4 June 2026. cbs.nl
- CBS, Sickness absence (Labour market dashboard), NEA CBS/TNO, annual figures 2025. cbs.nl