RMCtv : Simon says : Letter to the team-And more

[POSTMAN]

Home mailing - trading update - 20 July 2022.pdf

Dear colleague
I am very concerned. Over the last three months we have
been losing £1 million a day. We are back to where we
were before the pandemic.

We are simply not changing quickly enough, and this is
putting all our jobs at risk.

I am also concerned about what you believe to be true
about our finances.

The CWU are more than welcome to come and look at our
financial statements in detail. It is important that we all
understand the same truth.

We must also continue to implement the actions we have
already agreed as part of Pathway to Change, notably revisions, Scan-in Scan-out (SISO) in delivery
and agreeing a business model for Parcelforce that guarantees long term profitability.

Over the last few months, I have been reading so many different versions of the change we need, so
the purpose of this letter is to put the record straight. I want you to hear from me, exactly what we are
asking for.

And to be clear. We want to continue to provide the long-term job security you deserve. We want
to continue to provide the best terms and conditions in town, because we need the best people on
our team.

We own ‘Trust at the Doorstep’ thanks to you, and we are investing to make sure we can also be the
greenest delivery company in the land. Trust plus being the environment leader is an enormous
competitive advantage.

Before the pandemic, we were a letters business in decline. Nothing was going to change this trend.
But last year, almost £6 out of every £10 we earn came from parcels. The pandemic has given us a
lifeline thanks to the growth of e-commerce. We now have a great opportunity but as you know, we
are 100% optimised for letters, and we need to be 100% optimised for parcels as well.
We need to change, and change now

The truth is we’re going to have to make some significant changes so we can:
1. Get the most out of the c.£900m investment we have made in our infrastructure – and
specifically our parcel ‘Superhubs’ and automation machines
2. Give our parcel customers what they need, and make sure we can align our workload
and labour
3. Create a more agile relationship with our unions, so we can change at the same pace as
the market

We want to use our delivery and processing team as much as we can all year round, so we want to
introduce more flexible working models. This means you might work around one hour a day less in
the summer, and around one hour a day more in the winter than you do today, whilst getting the same
weekly pay all year round. There is also the ability to bank hours as the year moves on. This means we
will be less reliant on temporary workers during the Peak season. It also means you would be able to
get more time off in the summer.

For Sunday working, based on our current volumes, you would need to work a Sunday once every
40 weeks – so once or twice a year. Over the next three years, some of the core team in delivery
would need to work one Sunday every 4 weeks. And we don’t want you working 7-days a week, we
need different duty patterns. Last week, 50% of our Sunday parcels were delivered by temporary
workers. Sunday deliveries are helping is grow our business. Growth is good for everyone.

We want to make sure our workload is fair, which means we want to change our absence and sick
pay policy to make sure that as many of the team as possible attend work every day. Around 70% of
our absence is from 25% of the team. That is not fair.

We want to ‘buy out’ any historical allowances that half of the team enjoy that the other half
don’t get.

We need later start times so we can efficiently handle orders
placed at midnight to be delivered the next day, whilst also
lowering our emissions by using fewer flights. Let’s remember
that currently we still have a good proportion of the team
starting before 7:00 am. We believe this change will be better
for quality (both letters and parcels) whilst also providing
capacity for parcel growth.

But we cannot make this change in one step, we need to do it
gradually, over a number of years, so you have time to replan
your day.

By the end, we expect the impact of this change could mean
around 20% of the team moving up to one hour later, 70%
between one and two hours later, and the remainder up to
three hours later. Suggesting that we won’t do morning
deliveries, or that everyone will be delivering at 8pm at night
is simply not true.

And we want you to share in our success. We want to introduce an “above and beyond” bonus
scheme worth up to £520 a year, for those teams who exceed the agreed Pathway to Change
productivity target.

We have been discussing changes like this for a long time. But time is against us, we must change
now if we are to survive and grow. We stand ready to discuss these proposed changes together with
our pay offer with the CWU.

Together, we can make all this change whilst keeping the promises set out to you in this letter. This
includes no compulsory redundancies. If you want to work for us, we would love you to stay.
However, if we experience any industrial action that damages our business performance, we won’t be
able to guarantee these terms, and the decisions we would then have to take, to ensure the future of
the business, will become much tougher.

Royal Mail has been serving society for 506 years, we are determined to make sure that is the case for
the next 506 years.

There is nothing more important than Re-inventing Royal Mail for the Next Generations, so the newer
members of the team can enjoy the length of service many of you have enjoyed.

Change is difficult, but it is also worth it. Worth it for our customers, and worth it for every one of us.
But we must make the change now. We are at a crossroads.

Yours sincerely,
Si

[POSTMAN]

TRADING UPDATE FOR THE FIRST QUARTER APRIL TO JUNE 2022

Simon Says

Message from CEO Simon Thompson

We are losing £1 million a day

As you may have already seen on Workplace, we’ve released our trading update for the first three months of the year, from April to June 2022.
It is very worrying. We have announced that in the first three months of the year we are losing £1 million a day. This is an adjusted operating loss of £92 million.

Compared to the same period last year:
· Total revenue declined 11.5%
· Total parcel volumes were down 15%
· Addressed letter volumes (excluding elections) were down 6%

And the truth is, we didn’t react quickly enough to this fall in volumes.

Our productivity – particularly in delivery - is nowhere near the targets we agreed as part of the Pathway to Change agreement. Over the last few months productivity in delivery has actually gone backwards.

I have been worried about this for some time, but due to market rules this is the first time I could share this with you.
This is why we need to change. And change now.

We need to change – and change now

As I’ve said before, it’s clear we’re at a crossroads.
And when you’re at a crossroads, you have a choice. Do you change, or stay the same and hope for the best?
We've made progress building the infrastructure we need for Royal Mail to compete, especially given the growing demand for more larger parcels, delivering the next day – including Sundays – and in a more environmentally-friendly way.
But building the infrastructure is not enough. We have to transform the way we work too.

CWU ballot result

We found out yesterday that the CWU ballot result is a vote for industrial action.

Any form of industrial action would cause long-term damage. Our business performance would become even more challenging, putting at risk job security and the best conditions in our industry.

The parcels market is hyper competitive. Our retail customers can switch their volume to our competitors at the press of a button.
And they press that button, if they need to.

Industrial action would be the most significant act of self-harm the business could inflict on itself.
I believe we can work with the CWU to agree a deal for tomorrow, not just today.

But despite nearly three months of talks, the CWU have not engaged in any meaningful discussion on the changes we need to make to adapt. Ensuring we can change, at pace, is the route to protecting well-paid, permanent, jobs long term and retain our place as the industry leader on pay and terms and conditions. That is in all our interests.

We have asked CWU for further talks, and are hopeful that continuing our talks on change will lead to an agreement that avoids detrimental industrial action.

The CWU has a responsibility to recognise the reality of the situation we face as a business and act accordingly. Outlining how serious the situation is for us is not ‘for show’. It is for real.

In the coming week or so, some of you will receive a letter from me outlining more detail on our change asks, which I hope will help to answer come of the questions you have. You can also access the letter here.

We've also produced a poster for you to print and display for your teams.
Find out more and share

An RMtv Special has been published on Workplace, which you can watch by clicking here, as I talk with Jenny Hall about the results, our urgent need to grow the business and desire to reach agreement with our unions.

I believe we can work together to reinvent Royal Mail for the next generations, providing us all with job security and maintaining the best conditions in town. Royal Mail is a great business with huge potential.

But the world is changing and it isn’t going to wait for us – we need to change, and change now.
That is the only way to give you job security for tomorrow, not just for today.

Simon Says

We are at a crossroads, we need to change now
Message from CEO Simon Thompson
I am very concerned. Over the last three months we have been losing £1 million a day. We are back to where we were before the pandemic.
We are simply not changing quickly enough, and this is putting all our jobs at risk.
I am also concerned about what you believe to be true about our finances.

The CWU are more than welcome to come and look at our financial statements in detail. It is important that we all understand the same truth.
We must also continue to implement the actions we have already agreed as part of Pathway to Change, notably revisions, Scan-in Scan-out (SISO) in delivery and agreeing a business model for Parcelforce that guarantees long term profitability.

Over the last few months, I have been reading so many different versions of the change we need, so the purpose of this letter is to put the record straight. I want you to hear from me, exactly what we are asking for.

And to be clear. We want to continue to provide the long-term job security you deserve. We want to continue to provide the best terms and conditions in town, because we need the best people on our team.

We own ‘Trust at the Doorstep’ thanks to you, and we are investing to make sure we can also be the greenest delivery company in the land. Trust plus being the environment leader is an enormous competitive advantage.
Before the pandemic, we were a letters business in decline. Nothing was going to change this trend. But last year, almost £6 out of every £10 we earn came from parcels. The pandemic has given us a lifeline thanks to the growth of e-commerce. We now have a great opportunity but as you know, we are 100% optimised for letters, and we need to be 100% optimised for parcels as well.
We need to change, and change now

The truth is we’re going to have to make some significant changes so we can:
1. Get the most out of the c.£900m investment we have made in our infrastructure – and specifically our parcel 'Superhubs' and automation machines
2. Give our parcel customers what they need, and make sure we can align our workload and labour
3. Create a more agile relationship with our unions, so we can change at the same pace as the market

We want to use our delivery and processing team as much as we can all year round, so we want to introduce more flexible working models. This means you might work around one hour a day less in the summer, and around one hour a day more in the winter than you do today, whilst getting the same weekly pay all year round. There is also the ability to bank hours as the year moves on. This means we will be less reliant on temporary workers during the Peak season. It also means you would be able to get more time off in the summer.

For Sunday working, based on our current volumes, you would need to work a Sunday once every 40 weeks – so once or twice a year. Over the next three years, some of the core team in delivery would need to work one Sunday every 4 weeks. And we don’t want you working 7-days a week, we need different duty patterns. Last week, 50% of our Sunday parcels were delivered by temporary workers. Sunday deliveries are helping us grow our business. Growth is good for everyone.

We want to make sure our workload is fair, which means we want to change our absence and sick pay policyto make sure that as many of the team as possible attend work every day. Around 70% of our absence is from 25% of the team. That is not fair.
We want to ‘buy out’ any historical allowances that half of the team enjoy that the other half don’t get.

We need later start timesso we can efficiently handle orders placed at midnight to be delivered the next day, whilst also lowering our emissions by using fewer flights. Let’s remember that currently we still have a good proportion of the team starting before 7:00 am. We believe this change will be better for quality (both letters and parcels) whilst also providing capacity for parcel growth.

But we cannot make this change in one step, we need to do it gradually, over a number of years, so you have time to replan your day.
By the end, we expect the impact of this change could mean around 20% of the team moving up to one hour later, 70% between one and two hours later, and the remainder up to three hours later. Suggesting that we won’t do morning deliveries, or that everyone will be delivering at 8pm at night is simply not true.

And we want you to share in our success. We want to introduce an “above and beyond” bonus scheme worth up to £520 a year, for those teams who exceed the agreed Pathway to Change productivity target.

We have been discussing changes like this for a long time. But time is against us, we must change now if we are to survive and grow. We stand ready to discuss these proposed changes together with our pay offer with the CWU.

Together, we can make all this change whilst keeping the promises set out to you in this letter. This includes no compulsory redundancies. If you want to work for us, we would love you to stay.

However, if we experience any industrial action that damages our business performance, we won’t be able to guarantee these terms, and the decisions we would then have to take, to ensure the future of the business, will become much tougher.

Royal Mail has been serving society for 506 years, we are determined to make sure that is the case for the next 506 years.
There is nothing more important than Re-inventing Royal Mail for the Next Generations, so the newer members of the team can enjoy the length of service many of you have enjoyed.

Change is difficult, but it is also worth it. Worth it for our customers, and worth it for every one of us.
But we must make the change now. We are at a crossroads.

Our promise
1. Provide long term job security
2. Be Fair: Same workload for all
3. Protect your market leading salary, benefits and pension
4. Committed to no compulsory redundancies
5. Grow our business

Our pay offer
We have offered the CWU a pay deal worth up to 5.5%
· 2% already paid
· An additional 1.5% when the change has been agreed
· Plus 'above and beyond' bonus worth up to £520 or 2% of salary for those units that, as a team, exceed the agreed Pathway to Change productivity target
· A buy-out of several outdated allowances over a two-year period
To help answer any additional questions you may have - please reference the below Delivery home mailing insert / Processing home mailing insert.

confused.gif

[Schiff]

Dear Simon

If RM is being run so badly that it is losing £1million per day then why was £400million paid out to shareholders and what exactly did the CEO do to deserve his recent bonus?

As we move closer to simply being a minimum wage job then I doubt that many employees are too bothered about whether RM is successful in the future. If it goes under then there are plenty of vacancies out there. If you want your colleagues to feel committed to the company then you need to demonstrate, through their pay packet, that you value the hard physical work that they do and the toll that it takes on their bodies. Imposing a real terms pay cut and then trying to justify that as reasonable does the exact opposite, as does attacking sick pay and IHR for those whose bodies fail them from time to time in this physical job.


A seriously pissed off colleague.

[norris9]

Dear Simon,

Shouldn't you resign?, you are losing the company £1million a day as CEO and you have given yourself a massive bonus as well as gifted millions to your colleagues and shareholders at the top of the business. You also failed to implement the revision successfully. Most of the workforce isn't on your side due to all the above. What is going on?

Regards,
Norris.

[HTPostman]

Anything else you’d like? Sydney opera house? The hanging gardens of Babylon?

29B9E7B6-6AEB-4FA4-8D06-49BB06122F08.jpeg

Simon - hope you - don’t mind - me writing like this - only you - often write - your bullshit - in this way - too. But lately - I’m really - not feeling - like a valued member - of - your ‘team’

[GRS]

Why is it that every year we are constantly told we have to change or the business will go under, this has been going on for the last 20 odd years. To me that means every change these clowns at the top propose and implement hasn't or doesn't work thus we suffer this continual and endless battle with them. To my mind if you run a business that in on year can go from making a billion pound profit (750m & the 400m to S/H) to losing a million a day then you haven't a clue what you're doing and should get out of that company immediately! Every CEO we've had comes in with these fantasy plans that cause nothing but problems only for them to leave with a golden handshake, the next bufoon then walks through the door to utter those immortal words "we need to change".

f**k OFF THE LOT OF YER!!!!!!!!!

[panzer4]

Losing one million pounds a day!

So what your saying Simon is you are incompetent

[Wolf91]

£400M to shareholders

[yubin282]

Why is it that every year we are constantly told we have to change or the business will go under, this has been going on for the last 20 odd years. To me that means every change these clowns at the top propose and implement hasn't or doesn't work thus we suffer this continual and endless battle with them. To my mind if you run a business that in on year can go from making a billion pound profit (750m & the 400m to S/H) to losing a million a day then you haven't a clue what you're doing and should get out of that company immediately! Every CEO we've had comes in with these fantasy plans that cause nothing but problems only for them to leave with a golden handshake, the next bufoon then walks through the door to utter those immortal words "we need to change".

f**k OFF THE LOT OF YER!!!!!!!!!

Yup, In my time there's been 4 CEO's (I think) and everyone of them has failed with their various scatterbrain ideas. Take the hint Simon.

[broughts]

Why is it that we are always losing a million pounds a day a few years ago it was a million pounds before that a million pound really Simon do u take us for fools leaders in the industry that’s a joke ageing workforce ageing fleet of vehicles zero recruitment paying agency more than u do your real staff we are just hemorrhaging money and who suffers first the ones at the bottom s**t doesn’t flow uphill

[Pharox]

Simple Simon has done a grand job as RM's Boss.

1. Rushed through revisions that failed up and down the country.
2. Delayed millions of letters and parcels due to these revisions and lack of staff.
3. Failed to respect his workforce for all our hard work.
4. Insulted the workforce with these silly unworkable proposals.
5. Management voted for AI. Although they have came to some sort of agreement.
6. Front line staff have voted for AI.
7. Losing a million quid a day.
8. Gave way too much to his boys in the city and not reinvest the business and staff.

I'm sure there are a whole lot more *brilliant* things this guy has done, far too many to list.

Maybe, he and he pals should give back their bonuses and take a pay cut to help out the 'team'

[POSTMAN]

2nd post updated.

[IloveMYredTROLLEY!]

Don't plead poverty in the summer, when under normal circumstances far more income from parcels comes in from around Black Friday to Xmas.

There was plenty of money in the piggy back for the board to award each other hundreds of thousands of pounds each in bonuses plus wage increases greater than 2%, as well as hundreds of millions of pounds in share dividends.

£38 billion wasted on ineffective Test And Trace... You aren't very good with company money, are you, Simon?

[postieblueshirt]

Don't plead poverty in the summer, when under normal circumstances far more income from parcels comes in from around Black Friday to Xmas.

There was plenty of money in the piggy back for the board to award each other hundreds of thousands of pounds each in bonuses plus wage increases greater than 2%, as well as hundreds of millions of pounds in share dividends.

£38 billion wasted on ineffective Test And Trace... You aren't very good with company money, are you, Simon?

seems to be doing alright in his wage packet tho.

[pieoftheday]

Simon still persisting with those bloody daft revisions