THE Freight & Trade Alliance hosted an event for International Women’s Day, its Inaugural Women in Logistics Wellness Walk & Breakfast.

The event included a beach walk and breakfast at North Bondi Surf Life Saving Club in Sydney and a range of stimulating speakers including Sarah Pike from Amazon Flex and Maersk’s My Therese Blank.

The country manager for Amazon Flex (Australia and Singapore), Ms Pike took on the logistics role at the online retail giant in the height of the pandemic in June last year, moving from a marketing role in the company.

Amazon Flex is responsible for providing the best possible and fastest delivery experience for Amazon’s retail customers and launched early last year before the pandemic took hold.

Historically, Amazon has been dependent on third party carriers to deliver the last mile but Amazon Flex leverages the gig economy to deliver packages.

Ms Pike sees International Women’s Day as a call to action.

“We can be a force for change, a force for good… and create more freedoms, more choice, more opportunities from the women that are coming up behind us,” she said.

“Gender diversity is also good for business, it helps address the skills shortage not just in terms of recruitment, but organisations that have really strong inclusivity and diversity qualities also have much better retention.”

Ms Pike said research shows that organisations that have at least three women on their board see a 66% improvement on the return on capital invested and a 53% improvement on their earnings before tax.

Shipping line Maersk’s head of Oceania market, My Therese Blank said, “For me, diversity and inclusion is all about having an open mindset and really giving people a chance for who they are and what they can contribute. Not about how we look or what our background is.

“At Maersk we really try to create opportunities for women such as Strategies for Success.

“It’s really thinking about your image and what you want to project to others, how you build a network around  you of people who can support you and open doors and create opportunities,” she said.

2021: what’s to come

Ms Pike identified three key focus areas for logistics, especially last mile delivery, over the course of this year: volume, safety and speed.

“We’ve seen this huge increase in volume and demand, that’s not going to go anywhere. I think it’s definitely sticky demand.

“We will continue to see more and more people buying online.

Ms Blank encouraged women to volunteer for projects.

“Try to take ownership outside your direct job scope and show what you can do. Don’t wait for someone to nominate you for a project either, seek it out.

“Be visible, look for opportunities to show what you can do every day and when the opportunity is there, take it. And please give back to the rest of the women in our industry,” she said.

Ms Pike said, “Focus on yourself… and look out for each other. We’re all in it together, we’ve all got challenges and we are each others’ best sources of support.

“My last message to you all as we go into this year, if you do one thing, help all the women who are coming through, celebrate their successes, support their development, try to mentor people if you can, call out bad behaviours from both women and men”.

Ms Blank concluded, “Our industry is changing, just look around, but we still have more things to do to improve”.

Profits from the event on 8 March will be donated to charities Waves of Wellness and a women’s shelter.