Cable Turns Screw Over Royal Mail Chief's Pay

[UnhappyGremlin]

However, some board members believe there is a risk that Ms Greene could leave or be poached if her pay is not increased in the short term.

On one hand, I wouldn't necessarily see that as a bad thing.
On the other, we would only end up with another of her type.
Maybe better the devil you know.

Working isn't just related to physicality. There are many stressful and difficult situations for people who are CEO's to cope with.
But does that mean they need to be paid in the multi millions?
I don't think so.
Especially considering they tend not to even do a 5 day week, and some are even CEO's/work on the boards of more than one massive company, and get paid accordingly.

And, I don't oppose Moya getting a pay rise. Even to the point of maybe 10%.
But, it looks like some party or other is trying to argue for anything between a 50% rise, up to doubling/trebling her pay.
(Which would put her remuneration in line with the likes of British Gas/Centrica's CEO etc.)
When RM have spent the best part of a year getting posties to accept 9% over 3 years, still haven't agreed a deal with the managers yet for last year, let alone for the coming year, it would be totally outrageous and unacceptable to award a huge pay rise to the CEO.
We are living in times of austerity, I think it is just plain wrong for something like this to be discussed, let alone actually and seriously considered.

Add to that, RM has now asked EVERY department and unit to cut hours again, it doesn't look to those of us on the front line that we're all in this together.
It looks like the front line is being targeted so the top echelons can line their own pockets.

[DB1100]

well let moya come and shadow me for a day, if she works as hard as me or my colleagues, i'll endorse her pay rise... fat chance!!!

Presumably you feel that pay should be determined by the amount of physical effort involved?

Or perhaps he comes from the school of leadership that endorses the "Don't ask subordinates to do something your are not prepared to" - works for the forces.

Like "Go on lads, I'm right behind you".

Like H. Jones eh or perhaps Sgt Willets or Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe,think before you come out with such drivel.

[Brain Fury]

One of my many jobs before Royal Mail I was a Personal Assistant for a Senior Officer and they got the same comments. People always thinks its greener on t'other side.

I personally know I couldn't do her job and I have no desire to do it either. I think what really sticks in peoples throats is not the job she does (unless they really are wearing blinkers) as most will realise its a hard job with a skill set only a very few could fill with any competency. No what gets most is the vast amounts she and others at her level get, and yet its still not enough. There is something wrong when people are being evicted because they have an extra bedroom, while others (not just her) are getting multi-millions in pay and bonuses. Should be paid the same as a Postman, no - but neither IMHO should she be paid the same as 100 full timers are in a year.

I do like the idea that Directors should only be paid a certain multiple of their lowest paid workers (by hourly wage) and that they should receive a similar percentage pay rise - that seems a fairer system than what we have at present.

Well now that's a different argument and one I am sympathetic to but it couldn't be introduced in isolation.

[Brain Fury]

well let moya come and shadow me for a day, if she works as hard as me or my colleagues, i'll endorse her pay rise... fat chance!!!

Presumably you feel that pay should be determined by the amount of physical effort involved?

Or perhaps he comes from the school of leadership that endorses the "Don't ask subordinates to do something your are not prepared to" - works for the forces.

Apart from your own, none of the comments have anything to do with leadership. They have only been about her pay based purely on the usual nonsense about how little she works, how easy her job is, how anyone could do it ... blah, blah, blah. Does anybody here have the faintest inkling what she actually does? It doesn't seem like it.

Well clearly you think you know what she does so please enlighten us!

I don't know what she does but then I'm not the one making stupid comments about how easy her job is, how little she does etc.

[Judgee]

well let moya come and shadow me for a day, if she works as hard as me or my colleagues, i'll endorse her pay rise... fat chance!!!

Presumably you feel that pay should be determined by the amount of physical effort involved?

Or perhaps he comes from the school of leadership that endorses the "Don't ask subordinates to do something your are not prepared to" - works for the forces.

Apart from your own, none of the comments have anything to do with leadership. They have only been about her pay based purely on the usual nonsense about how little she works, how easy her job is, how anyone could do it ... blah, blah, blah. Does anybody here have the faintest inkling what she actually does? It doesn't seem like it.

Well clearly you think you know what she does so please enlighten us!

I don't know what she does but then I'm not the one making stupid comments about how easy her job is, how little she does etc.

Then how do you know how easy/hard her job is or how much or how little she does? Why are other peoples comments stupid when you have no idea if they are correct or not?

[Brain Fury]

well let moya come and shadow me for a day, if she works as hard as me or my colleagues, i'll endorse her pay rise... fat chance!!!

Presumably you feel that pay should be determined by the amount of physical effort involved?

Or perhaps he comes from the school of leadership that endorses the "Don't ask subordinates to do something your are not prepared to" - works for the forces.

Apart from your own, none of the comments have anything to do with leadership. They have only been about her pay based purely on the usual nonsense about how little she works, how easy her job is, how anyone could do it ... blah, blah, blah. Does anybody here have the faintest inkling what she actually does? It doesn't seem like it.

Well clearly you think you know what she does so please enlighten us!

I don't know what she does but then I'm not the one making stupid comments about how easy her job is, how little she does etc.

Then how do you know how easy/hard her job is or how much or how little she does? Why are other peoples comments stupid when you have no idea if they are correct or not?

Really?

[DirtyHarry]

Yeah, Greene works like a navvy, unlike us posties, so she must be worth more than the £1.5m she gets thrown at her currently.

[redneck]

Greene's pay is an affront to human kind, as is any salary over £100,000 (that includes Billy Hayes). No human being is worth £1 million in comparison to a UK base wage of £13,000 for a 40 hour week or £1 a day in Bangladesh.

[Judgee]

well let moya come and shadow me for a day, if she works as hard as me or my colleagues, i'll endorse her pay rise... fat chance!!!

Presumably you feel that pay should be determined by the amount of physical effort involved?

Or perhaps he comes from the school of leadership that endorses the "Don't ask subordinates to do something your are not prepared to" - works for the forces.

Apart from your own, none of the comments have anything to do with leadership. They have only been about her pay based purely on the usual nonsense about how little she works, how easy her job is, how anyone could do it ... blah, blah, blah. Does anybody here have the faintest inkling what she actually does? It doesn't seem like it.

Well clearly you think you know what she does so please enlighten us!

I don't know what she does but then I'm not the one making stupid comments about how easy her job is, how little she does etc.

Then how do you know how easy/hard her job is or how much or how little she does? Why are other peoples comments stupid when you have no idea if they are correct or not?

Really?

Great comeback that really told me didn't it!

[Brain Fury]

well let moya come and shadow me for a day, if she works as hard as me or my colleagues, i'll endorse her pay rise... fat chance!!!

Presumably you feel that pay should be determined by the amount of physical effort involved?

Or perhaps he comes from the school of leadership that endorses the "Don't ask subordinates to do something your are not prepared to" - works for the forces.

Apart from your own, none of the comments have anything to do with leadership. They have only been about her pay based purely on the usual nonsense about how little she works, how easy her job is, how anyone could do it ... blah, blah, blah. Does anybody here have the faintest inkling what she actually does? It doesn't seem like it.

Well clearly you think you know what she does so please enlighten us!

I don't know what she does but then I'm not the one making stupid comments about how easy her job is, how little she does etc.

Then how do you know how easy/hard her job is or how much or how little she does? Why are other peoples comments stupid when you have no idea if they are correct or not?

Really?

Great comeback that really told me didn't it!

The sad fact is that I doubt anyone could successfully tell you anything. TBT has shown a bit of common sense about the issue but I can see that is probably too difficult for you to comprehend.

[Judgee]

No Brain I understand fully where you are coming from. Deriding other peoples posts with some misguided superiority complex not realising the irony of your own posts. You say other peoples posts are "stupid" because they don't know what Moya does in her job and yet you have already admitted that you have no idea yourself. Try putting a little more Brain behind your posts and a little less Fury, they'd make a lot more sense and be somewhat less ridiculous!

Just to try and educate you a little, here's an example of why I believe Moyas job is a cushy little overpaid number. David Lenigas (a fairly well known businessman) is on the Board of over a hundred companies and CEO of many. If being an executive is so hard how can he and many other executives be involved in so many other companies? The answer, because they are merely figure heads and names for heading note paper that's why. Their input is minimal their wages extortionate. Ok Moya is head of a large company and as far as I am aware only one, but her input is still minimal. She has a board of directors to deal with the daily chores for her, all she has to do is come up with ideas on making savings. Pretty much all of which involve getting more work out of the work force. That's hardly going to keep her busy is it?

Now, try and explain why you think she works hard for her money and deserves an even more extortionate figure than she already receives? Or do you just have some kind of school boy crush on her?

[Straight4ward]

This is worth a read, even accepting the spin on it.

Leading in the 21st century: An interview with Moya Greene

Moya Greene is the first woman and first non-Briton to head Royal Mail, the United Kingdom’s state-owned postal service. She is leading a major overhaul of Royal Mail’s business model ahead of its expected privatization.
September 2012 | byDominic Barton and Robert Nuttall

When Canada native Moya Greene arrived in London in July 2010 to take up her duties as chief executive of Royal Mail, Britain’s centuries-old state-owned postal service was mired in trouble: it faced a rapid decline in revenue from letters, the service’s historic mainstay; a huge pension deficit; union opposition to government plans for privatization; and an unworkable regulatory framework that discouraged the business from introducing new products and prevented it from setting its own prices.
Sidebar

It was a daunting list of challenges for any executive, let alone the first woman and first non-Briton to head Royal Mail since Henry VIII established a “master of posts” in 1516. But Greene, a veteran Canadian civil servant, came well prepared. In her previous job as head of Canada Post, she increased profits and streamlined operations ahead of talk of privatization. In an early public role as an assistant deputy minister for transport, she oversaw the privatization of Canada Railway and the deregulation of Canada’s airline industry. She could also draw on experience gained in high-profile management roles at three of Canada’s largest private companies, Toronto-Dominion Bank, Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, and Bombardier, the aircraft manufacturer.

In her two years at Royal Mail, Greene has succeeded in reversing declines in revenues and profit and has built goodwill with regulators and the postal unions—even as she leads a strategic overhaul of the service’s business model. In April 2012, she spoke to Dominic Barton, McKinsey’s global managing director, and Robin Nuttall, a partner in McKinsey’s London office, about how she deals with the challenges of her role.

McKinsey: You’ve held key leadership roles in both the public and private sector. Which is harder?

Moya Greene: A decade ago, I’d have said that it was harder to be a public official than an executive in the private sector. But the tables have turned. It’s tough these days to be the CEO of any business—even a very successful one with a balanced view of the corporation’s position in society.

McKinsey: How does your public sector experience inform your perspective as a CEO?

Moya Greene: My public-sector experience helped me understand how easily sound policies can be derailed by small, symbolic things. It may not matter that the policy change you are advocating is the product of fantastic analytics or years of brilliant stakeholder management; the tiniest little spark can become a flash fire—something that takes hold and transforms perceptions. If you work in the public sector, you learn the value of developing antennae for popular perceptions and keeping them finely tuned.

McKinsey: You work hard at internal communications, but Royal Mail is one of Britain’s largest employers. How do you connect with all 160,000 people on your payroll? And why is that so important to you?

Moya Greene: I spend time in the field communicating with our own people trying to help them understand how good we are at what we do. If you count postal workers and their families, that’s nearly 500,000 people. They are the most powerful ambassadors for our brand, and they need to be given accurate information about what we’re doing. That’s not always easy because there is so much negativism in the media. I see good internal communications as a way to punch through that and get our message out—to tell our people, “Here’s what’s really happening. Stand up and be proud.”

McKinsey: Royal Mail has a unique mandate. It’s publicly owned but operates like a company, and legislation passed last year clears the way for it to be privatized. How do you strike the right balance between profit and public mission?

Moya Greene: It is a glorious mission. We were established by Henry VIII. We’re the only company in the land allowed to use Her Majesty’s livery on everything. We go to 29 million addresses six days a week. But even if we weren’t that kind of company, I think we would still take a broad, public-minded view of our position in society. The salaries we pay support every town, village and city in this country. We offer stable jobs with good benefits and spend billions of pounds a year on everything from fuel and electricity to boots for our postmen and women. The roster of companies supported by our purchases is huge.

I think most CEOs today understand they have look at more than just the bottom line. I don’t see any of my peers these days who take such a narrow view, because you can’t afford to. Of course, you can’t afford to take your eyes off the bottom line, either. I certainly can’t; when I came here, we were running out of cash. I was grappling with decisions that would determine whether or not we could stay in business. But you cannot position your company in the broader social and economic fabric of the nation if all you do is look at the financial dimensions of performance.

McKinsey: How do you strike a balance between the many demands on your time, particularly when driving change?

Moya Greene: I try to think about my agenda as divided into big blocks of time that I actively monitor. I recently did a diary analysis, which showed I spend roughly 15 percent of my time managing and understanding our employees. Another 25 percent of my time last year was devoted to changing the fundamentals of the company, notably its unbelievably wrongheaded regulatory model (which stopped us changing a product, a product spec, or a product price). Without wholesale changes to that model, I felt there was no hope for the company. Next, I spent 15 percent of my time seeking to change the conversation inside Royal Mail so that we put the customer much closer to the heart of what we talk about and do. How do we tap into customer sentiments and improve satisfaction? A further 10 percent was taken up with what I call strategic realignment, helping people understand that we're going to make our money in future in parcels and packets, in media, and by selling our data assets in a more commercial way. That left 35 percent for everything else: organization, recruitment, managing the board, and crisis management.

McKinsey: Is it possible to take on the responsibility of leading such a large organization on which so many people depend and still have some semblance of a personal life? Where do you find the stamina you need to do the job?

Moya Greene: Well, the first criterion is: do you love it? It’s a seven-day-a-week job. I think that’s true for anyone in these roles. If you don’t love the company and the people—really love them—you can’t do a job like this.

I’m pretty energetic. I start at five in the morning. I don’t even think about it anymore; the alarm goes off and I’m up. I go for a 30-minute run. I’m a big walker—that’s my favorite thing. I try to get a good walk every weekend. I go on walking vacations.

I’ve usually got three or four books on the go. I’ve given up on novels. I can’t get through them no matter how good they are; there’s no way I’ll finish before there’s some kind of interruption. So I read poetry now: the collected works of Ted Hughes, Emily Dickinson. I’m working my way through Philip Larkin. You can take a Larkin poem and read it on the bus in 15 minutes. The good ones stay with you and will come back to you. That’s what I like about poetry: you get a little shot of mental protein without a lot of time.

McKinsey: Are there things employers can do to encourage women in leadership roles? Should they offer more flexibility for women in leadership roles?

Moya Greene: You just cannot expect to be the chief financial officer at a big company or the head of the legal department if you’re working on “flexi” time.

I had childcare from the time my kid was three months old, and she went to Harvard, and now she's at McGill. My daughter has had a good role model, somebody who was keenly interested in her education and making sure she got a good one and set the bar high.

McKinsey: So how do you do it?

Moya Greene: You have to get organized!
About the authors

This interview was conducted by Dominic Barton, McKinsey's global managing director, based in McKinsey's London office; and Robin Nuttall, a principal in the London office.

[Judgee]

"Moya Greene: Well, the first criterion is: do you love it? It’s a seven-day-a-week job. I think that’s true for anyone in these roles. If you don’t love the company and the people—really love them—you can’t do a job like this."

Yep she loves us. So much so she has people stuck on Saturday/rolling three month contracts and turns a blind eye to bullying and harassment.

Interesting reading, but with more spin than a washing machine!

[Brain Fury]

No Brain I understand fully where you are coming from. Deriding other peoples posts with some misguided superiority complex not realising the irony of your own posts. You say other peoples posts are "stupid" because they don't know what Moya does in her job and yet you have already admitted that you have no idea yourself. Try putting a little more Brain behind your posts and a little less Fury, they'd make a lot more sense and be somewhat less ridiculous!

Just to try and educate you a little, here's an example of why I believe Moyas job is a cushy little overpaid number. David Lenigas (a fairly well known businessman) is on the Board of over a hundred companies and CEO of many. If being an executive is so hard how can he and many other executives be involved in so many other companies? The answer, because they are merely figure heads and names for heading note paper that's why. Their input is minimal their wages extortionate. Ok Moya is head of a large company and as far as I am aware only one, but her input is still minimal. She has a board of directors to deal with the daily chores for her, all she has to do is come up with ideas on making savings. Pretty much all of which involve getting more work out of the work force. That's hardly going to keep her busy is it?

Now, try and explain why you think she works hard for her money and deserves an even more extortionate figure than she already receives? Or do you just have some kind of school boy crush on her?

Presumably in your mind David Lenigas is working 100 times harder than Moya? Now you're just proving my point. I think I am going to follow Mark Twain's advice on this discussion.

[Danelectro]

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Mark Twain