Algorithmic management in warehouses, delivery and retail

In algorithmic management, software takes over tasks that used to belong to a manager: allocating work, measuring the pace, drawing up rosters and assessing performance. Researchers from TNO and three other European occupational safety institutes write in the first 2026 issue of the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health that such systems are spreading quickly from platform work to logistics, retail and care. Their review of 39 studies from 2022 to 2024 shows that the systems often increase workload while reducing autonomy and contact with colleagues, especially when the way they work is opaque or tasks are tightly timed and tracked. According to the authors, giving employees a say and explaining how the system works softens those effects.

A Swedish study, published in November 2025 in the International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health, measures this in logistics. Between February and July 2024 the researchers surveyed 978 workers online: 592 drivers and 378 warehouse workers, recruited through social media and union newsletters. They measured how often tasks, shifts and instructions were assigned automatically, whether work was tracked digitally and whether performance was assessed automatically. About 9 per cent were subject to heavy algorithmic management. In that group mental health complaints were 2.1 times as common as among those with little or none, workplace accidents with sick leave 1.9 times, headaches 1.7 times and muscle and joint complaints 1.5 times. The associations were stronger for drivers than in the warehouse. This is a snapshot, so cause and effect are not established.

Tiago Alexandre Vieira and Pedro Mendonça of Heriot-Watt University look beyond a single sector. In an exploratory article from late October 2026 they use a representative European survey of workers to examine how automated allocation of work, among other things, relates to safety and health at work. They read algorithmic management through Labour Process Theory, as part of the struggle over control of work, and criticise the debate for treating the technology separately from the decision-making room that management keeps for itself. The title speaks of a contested relation and of non-deterministic insights. What that means for the outcomes is not stated in the abstract, which gives no figures and does not name the survey either.

In shops it is mainly about the roster. For the Talking Shop 2026 report, Retail Week and Rotageek, which sells rostering software, surveyed 500 UK shop workers. Of these, 71 per cent call the rostering in their own store reactive, with last-minute changes and too many or too few people on the shop floor. At the same time, 76 per cent say they would trust an AI system with the roster in some form.

Regulation is moving too. On 17 December 2025 the European Parliament adopted a resolution asking the Commission for a legislative proposal on algorithmic management at work. Parliament wants continuous human oversight of decisions such systems take or prepare, written explanations for employees and their representatives, consultation when introducing systems that affect pay, appraisal, task allocation or working time, and a ban on processing emotional and biometric data. For platform work there is already a European directive from 2024. On 29 June 2026 the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment put the draft Platform Work Act out for consultation. Anyone who works as a driver or delivers meals via a platform will then be able to require the platform to explain the algorithm’s decisions, must be told when the way it works changes, and dismissal or suspension may only be decided by a human.

How solid is this? Researchers in several countries find the same direction, from a network of European occupational safety institutes to a study in Swedish logistics, and both Brussels and The Hague are working on rules. The Heriot-Watt article adds a representative European sample, although its results cannot yet be followed in figures. Beyond that, the evidence from warehouses and transport consists mainly of snapshots from northern Europe, Dutch measurements are missing and the retail figures come from a software vendor. So the picture is not yet settled.