RMtv live

Service delivery director – North, Rob Jenson, took part in an RMtv live session at Chester mail centre.

Process and delivery colleagues from Wrexham, Shrewsbury and Chester asked a number of questions about the shorter working week, automation, productivity, apprenticeships, where we need to improve, the future of our fleet, our environmental obligations and the challenges we are facing with the decline in letters and the rise in parcel volumes.

‘We’re already very highly automated when it comes to our letters products,’ said Rob. ‘Around 90% of letters volumes are automated. When it comes to parcels it’s only around 10%. But, we have plans to grow that significantly to at least 30%. Clearly, it will take a bit of time to get to the same levels we enjoy with letters, but we have a big investment programme in place.

‘We’re having a challenging time as a business. We had to announce to the market a reduction in profit - that’s a big challenge for our organisation. We are seeing a much greater decline in letters than we anticipated and the growth in parcel volumes is unable to offset this decline. This puts a lot of pressure on us to review our costs.

‘We have also seen declines in productivity and quality. We have not been delivering the same levels of service to customers as we have enjoyed in recent years so our quality needs to improve. We need to recognise these challenges and collectively work hard to get back to the strong levels of performance we know we can deliver.

‘We all need to work together to get back to where we know we can be.’