Simon Says
we don't need everyone working on a Sunday - we don't need everyone working every Sunday - research is Sundays will be worth half a day of the week - so that means we need 50% of the team - but parcels are c50%+ of revenue but c25% of volume - so we probably need 25% of the team to cover a Sunday - at the moment we are doing 1/10th of this potential - so we need c2.5% of the team to cover a Sunday - too much to ask.....?
parcels for now - during our recent customer workshops - called USO & Beyond - the consumer said they would be interested in a premium letter service (telegram) - on days we don’t have letter deliveries - they also said 5 day letters are ok today - and in the future 3 days of second class only - we spoke to the young and the old - they were also clear that 7 day parcels to and from the doorstep - with low CO2 - delivered by the postie they trust - was a winning proposition…..
Nick
A year ago we started delivery on Sundays for some of our largest retail customers and this is proving really popular.
In a little over year, we've delivered more than nine and a half million parcels on a Sunday from a standing start.
And with just one product our tracked 24 next day product.
We know that expanding into Sunday deliveries has helped us win more business and we're taking a number of really big contracts.
That's because if you can offer the seventh day, you get the business for the other six too.
We're currently only delivering Sundays for about 75 of our biggest customers and they are the biggest.
But over the coming months, we're going to be expanding this out to many more products and services and a much wider group of customers over ten thousand customers this year.
Currently, Sundays are started by volunteers and agency, but if we're really going to scale this and grow that business, we need a better model that reduces our reliance on agency workers and all the cost involved in that.
And ensure that we have a reliable resourcing model so we can deliver guaranteed levels of service to our customers.
So, as part of negotiations with the CWU, we want to discuss how we can introduce innovative duty patterns to ensure we have a consistent level of service on a Sunday.
I know that many people will be thinking, oh no, this means I'm going to have to work on a Sunday all the time, just to reassure you, that's not how we see this working.
Sundays are currently only around no more than five percent of our parcel volume during the week.
We only deliver certain products for certain customers on that day and no letters, of course on a Sunday either.
So we won't need anywhere near a full team nationwide for a long time to come.
But there's no denying the Sunday delivery market is growing, so we have to find a way to ensure we can get our fair share quickly before our competitors win all of that Sunday business and we struggle to win contracts because we can't offer that seven day service that our customers are demanding, telling us they want right now.
I get it of course, for many people, Sundays is an important day to spend with family, that's why we want to really work through with the CWU, how this could work, so it gives people plenty of balance and plenty of time off for the weekend.
For example, by introducing more innovative and flexible duty patterns, we could give people more Saturdays off.
It's not about asking you to work more hours, it's about finding patterns that work for the business and you by getting 7 days' cover.
Now at this stage in the negotiations, I can't give you guarantees on how often people would be asked to work on Sundays or what other days they would get off as part of new innovative duty.
that's something we really want to work on with the CWU so we can get the balance right between consistent service levels on Sundays without the need to rely on more expensive agency staff, and ensuring you all get time off at the weekend to rest and enjoy quality time with your friends and families.
We've explained to the CWU, we want to discuss how to include Sunday in the working week so we can grab these opportunities for all of our benefit.
It's clear that Sunday is becoming like any other day in the delivery industry, much like shops and the retail industry went through that shift from the 1990's.
So the question for us is how do we make sure Royal Mail is at the forefront of this change in customer behavior, and we set ourselves up to win before it's too late and the rest of the industry has eaten. our lunch
We'll also be raising how this affects managers with unite and we're hoping to work closely with our unions to make sure we can introduce duty patterns that work for you and ensure we can all benefit from this growth in the market quickly before our competitors do that for us.
#We have the right amount of parcels-just not on the right-day
