Talking with you

The future of our business, investing in technology and looking after our people were all topics covered as our town hall programme commenced yesterday.

Geoff Braden, Central service delivery director, spoke to around 150 delivery office and mail centre colleagues at Home Counties North in Hemel Hempstead, while Stephen Agar, MD consumer & network access, was at Debden delivery office and Romford mail centre. Ricky McAulay, South service delivery director, was at Chelmsford mail centre.

They tackled a number of questions from frontline colleagues.

At Home Counties North, a Process OPG asked: ‘How is it that Royal Mail is behind with customer demands and we don’t invest in technology like other companies?’

Geoff talked about the investment the business has made in technology in the last few years, including new PDAs and automation, as well as advances for customers such as label printing in our customer service points.

When asked what we are doing to arrest the decline in letters, Geoff said it was ‘very challenging’ but how, as an example, we’re speaking to around 2,000 directors from businesses across the UK as part of our Mailmen campaign and working with mail companies to provide better services in handling business mail.

One colleague was keen to hear about the opportunities to expand through logistics. Geoff reported how we have the biggest fleet in the UK. He said investing in technology will help provide more intelligence about the size of mail we carry, utilising barcodes. Selling empty space on our vehicles and the commercialisation of our workshops were among the other areas discussed as ways in which we are growing this part of our business.

We’ll be holding around 35 town halls across the country between now and the end of April.