A broad performance

BROADSTAIRS delivery office has won the CEO and COO Award for the ‘Best Small Delivery Office’ and the ‘Most Improved Delivery Office’ in the South East region for Q2 of the 2020 / 2021 awards, writes Zoe Walker.

The DO, based on the East Kent coast, held a low-key presentation with a ‘few tubs of sweets’ from delivery office manager, Yvonne Buddle, to celebrate.

Yvonne says: ‘To look after everyone’s mental health, we had to have a complete and utter change of outlook from the start of the pandemic.

‘The mentality from before that “we have to clear everything” had to go, and we had to learn how to manage failure. That was hard.

‘We made sure that we did not have anyone failing twice on a walk. Which helped.

‘In terms of mental health – it can get overwhelming, that feeling of the need to clear and taking a pride in it. Then suddenly you are unable to do it. So you do the best you can and relish in that.

‘The changes have been down to the team. Just the flexibility that this lot have shown has been fantastic.

‘They have done so well with so little complaint and really pulled together.

‘Like everyone, we have had unprecedented levels to deal with – we’ve been working at Christmas levels since March.

‘I’ve had a lot of support from other DOMs in the area and that has made a difference because it can be tough being a singleton DOM.

‘We have been working on the culture since I came here – learning how to speak to one another and there have been some big changes..

‘But things are different to how they used to be. We drew up a set of rules for how this unit would be and decided to work as a collective. I think we are now really good at positive communication.’

Yvonne and the team have not left anything to chance during the pandemic and worked hard together to devise a clear strategy that works for the business and for them. 

‘We see everyone in Broadstairs as our customer,’ she says. ‘So managing failures and not having the van share has been really hard. We’ve made it so you can’t have failures two days in a row. And ensured that all our premium products come out.

‘Sickness has eased off recently and is currently at the lowest that it has ever been so I think that shows how dedicated everyone is. 

‘Customers have been 95% positive, I would say. We had some complaints at the beginning of the pandemic, but once the situation was explained and people realised that Covid-19 was causing difficulties across all companies, that stopped.’