What is Every Penny Counts?

Like every business striving for high performance, Royal Mail needs everyone to play their part in being disciplined about managing costs and more considered in our approach to spending. This is not about penny pinching, but it is to ensure that we get the most value for money. 

Every pound counts, every penny counts.

Is there a better way to do something? Can we do something cheaper or more efficiently? Are there redundant activities we can simply stop? The best ideas for improvement come from the experts in their field and that is you.

Submit your idea here.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted ideas so far, we’ve had over 600 in from people across all areas of the business. We spent January reviewing every idea, grouping them into themes and looking at how we can action them.

These are the top three most frequently submitted ideas:

• Travel including the Agiito system: Investigations have been undertaken by Procurement to identify loss in this area and as a result Travel Packs are currently being produced.
• Energy Waste: LED Project already underway and all energy related ideas are being assessed for their environmental impact to push towards our zero emissions goal.
• Returning unused IT equipment: Guides have been produced to ensure that everyone understands the process in which to return equipment.

York Labelling Initiative 

One Every Penny Counts initiative we’ve seen rolled out across many of our sites is recycling labels. Emma Gilthorpe alongside RMtv visited Cardiff Mail Centre where they heard from Peter O’Reilly, Work Area Manager, about the savings made and the steps taken to make it happen. Click here to watch.

This intiative not only saves money but help the environment too.  The idea was to recycle the York labels from Delivery Units back into Mail Centres as opposed to continually using new cards.  Leading the project and liaising with Units he was able to deploy this and in the past year has recycled over 175k of York labels, saving more than c. £4.5k whilst also reducing environmental waste.  Through the Operational Every Penny Counts Board this has now expanded across multiple sites. 

This is a great example of how ideas can first be tested and then implemented on a bigger scale, showing us that no idea is too big or too small.

Christmas Card & Stamps

An individual was tasked with the production of the mailing list for all employees to receive the annual Christmas Card and Stamps to be completed in w/c 23^rd September.  Given the quantity of leavers we have on a weekly basis, he proceeded to challenge whether this data could be delayed given it wasn’t landing on doorsteps until 25^th November, but he was informed that due to work constraints this had to be done now.  However, on 15^th October he was asked to run a refreshed report which removed a total of 1.6k people from the distribution list at an avoided cost of £130k!

This is a perfect example of how someone testing and challenging even their own tasks can really save money for the business and move us into a more commercial culture.

If you need help or have a question about Every Penny Counts, the team are here to support you. Email everypennycounts@royalmail.com and someone will get back to you as soon as possible.