Royal Mail’s chief executive has highlighted the scale of sickness across the workforce, saying that around 6,500 postal staff are absent each day out of a total headcount of roughly 130,000.
Martin Seidenberg, who leads International Distribution Services (IDS), the parent organisation of Royal Mail, told attendees at The Times CEO Summit that the organisation aims to be at the “vanguard” of efforts to address the UK’s wider economic inactivity. He noted that the level of sickness absence is costing the business about £200 million annually.
“It has a cost to us, and of course an impact to you, to society, because of the quality that we can deliver or not deliver,” he said, describing the issue as “super important for us to fix”.
To respond to the problem, IDS has introduced round‑the‑clock access to an online GP service for all employees. Seidenberg said uptake had been unexpectedly strong. “We’ve been very surprised how heavily this is being used,” he said. “We like it, because quite frankly, we believe that the sooner we can take care of our people and they have access to medical support, the sooner they’re likely to return to the job.”
Seidenberg also argued that the education system is not equipping young people with the technological abilities required in modern workplaces.
He appeared alongside Sir Charlie Mayfield, former John Lewis chairman and leader of the government’s Keep Britain Working review. Mayfield said it was unsurprising that many school leavers struggle to transition into employment, remarking that “we’ve created a system where education and employment have never been more separate”.
Mayfield pointed to the decline of work experience as a key factor. “People basically don’t do work experience anymore [because] we’ve made it so difficult for people to do it,” he said, giving the example of a tradesperson willing to host a student but unable to do so due to a lack of employers’ liability insurance. “It’s madness and yet it is also fixable. We need to sort out the whole pathways into work.”
He added that “The easiest and most valuable person to recruit is the one you’ve already got in the business,” arguing that improving skills within existing workforces offers benefits for employers, individuals and the public purse.”
