Poland’s state post office, Poczta Polska, has announced plans to offer 15% of its workforce voluntary redundancy as part of a “transformation plan” to make it into a “modern company”.
The plan will also involve modernising IT systems, logistics processes and the sales network, including reducing the current common practice of post office branches selling a wide range of products unrelated to postal services, such as Christian religious items.
“This is an absolute reinvention of the post office,” Sebastian Mikosz, Poczta Polska’s CEO, told the Polish Press Agency (PAP) today. The decision comes after Poczta Polska last year recorded a record 621 million zloty (€145 million) loss.
💬"W Planie Transformacji wykorzystamy atuty posiadane przez Spółkę. @PocztaPolska to ponad 7,6 tys. placówek zlokalizowanych w całej Polsce, dzięki czemu posiada unikalną zdolność dystrybucji produktów. Marka jest rozpoznawalna, a jej pracownicy – m. in. listonosze – cieszą się… pic.twitter.com/WSOKumVqfV
— PocztaPolska (@PocztaPolska) August 14, 2024
The changes, announced on Wednesday, will cover eight areas: sales, logistics, human resources, IT, organisation and management, real estate, finance as well as the “capital group” area. They will be implemented in phases over the next three years.
In human resources, the post office wants to this year offer around 9,300 people, 15% of its workforce, a voluntary redundancy package that will pay them 12 months’ salary and allow them to take up a different job immediately. It estimates the cost of the scheme at 600 million zloty.
The redundancies will not affect mail carriers or workers in post office branches, said Mikosz. He says that one of the overarching aims is to “debureaucratise” the post office.
According to Mikosz, Poczta Polska has the highest employment costs among European postal services. “We have costs of around 65%, while other European operators have costs of between 35 and 45%,” he explained.
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Poczta Polska also notes that around a quarter of its employees are set to retire within the next six years while only 5% of employees are aged 18 to 25.
“We are not an attractive employer today,” Mikosz told broadcaster TVN24. “We need to change the organisation of work, but also pay more for this work,” he added, explaining that those who remain with Poczta Polska will see their salaries increase.
Another 500 million zloty will be spent on reforming IT systems, an area characterised by Mikosz as having a “technological deficit”.
Mikosz explained that the company will also rethink its approach to sales and logistics in order to adjust to the needs of a modern customer, all without “abandoning universal services, parcels, what the post office has been doing until now”.
Spanish football club Atlético Madrid has announced Polish delivery giant InPost as one of its new sponsors.
The deal marks the latest step in the firm's international expansion and will see its famous parcel lockers installed at the Metropolitano stadium https://t.co/dHuef8Codg
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) August 13, 2024
At the same time, “what has been up to now, I would say the DNA of the post office, that is, the carrying of letters, we need to rebuild into the carrying of other goods”, Mikosz added, pointing to the need of expanding Poczta Polska’s delivery services.
The company also wants to revise its retail assortment. “It cannot be that when you enter the post office, you see a bazaar where shoe polish lies between pots and wallets,” said Mikosz, who also pointed to the wide range of products with religious content.
“Post offices cannot be perceived as shops with devotional items. Let parishes do that,” he told PAP, adding that the range of products currently available in post offices has “caused memes and ridicule”.
Poczta Polska also wants to invest in its properties, revitalising 30-35 buildings it owns in city centres into “postal galleries” with restaurant, cultural and commercial services. Meanwhile, in smaller towns and villages, it will keep its more traditional role.
A selection of some of the items available in Poland’s post office in 2022 (photo credit: Tomasz Molina/Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 4.0)
“The transformation plan for Poczta Polska is to ensure its survival, profitability and financial stability. It is to be a company that earns its own money,” said Mikosz. “The post office must become a market player that fights for the customer.”
Despite being the second-largest employer in Poland with over 62,000 employees and 7,600 offices around the country, Poczta Polska has often been recording losses in recent years.
The company is losing out to rival, private firms such as InPost, which offer parcel delivery lockers and courier services combined with an online tracking system and are perceived as more convenient and reliable than traditional postal services.
Mikosz has blamed his predecessors for negligence in how they ran the post office, saying that the organisation will submit notifications of potential crimes to prosecutors after a series of audits revealed the diversion of funds to “not where they need to be”.
A pamphlet advising Poles to follow the government line in this month's referendum is being distributed by the post office.
Produced by a state-funded foundation, it calls for a vote against the "invasion of illegal immigrants" and "Tusk's secret plans" https://t.co/pKJYkCKUDY
— Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) October 5, 2023
Main image credit: tadekk/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).
Agata Pyka is an assistant editor at Notes from Poland. She is a journalist and a political communication student at the University of Amsterdam. She specialises in Polish and European politics as well as investigative journalism and has previously written for Euractiv and The European Correspondent.
