Unrest grows over treatment of Royal Mail IT workers

Royal Mail’s prolonged attempt to reorganise its IT department is sapping

morale and casting a pall over its modernisation programme, according to

affected employees.

To support the group’s £1.2bn change agenda unveiled last year, chief

information officer Robin Dargue launched a staff review with the aim of

reducing the then 300-strong permanent IT workforce by half.

As part of that review, IT staff were asked to undergo one-day assessments,

which were to be used to identify staff who could be moved to new roles.

Meanwhile, workers union Unite secured an agreement with the group that no

compulsory redundancies would take place.

Following the assessments, some employees found positions internally, others

were offered jobs that they felt were unsuitable and decided to leave, while

about 20 staff have been left “in limbo” on full pay.

The staff in question were told by the group that they had to do “voluntary”

work for three days a week and use the remaining two days to look for a job.

“We feel that the process could have been handled differently, by, for

example, redeploying staff to value-adding activities such as improving customer

relationships, instead of just getting them to apply for jobs,” said Brian

Scott, assistant national secretary at Unite.

According to an internal source, who asked to remain anonymous, the idea was

that the activities would enhance their chances of securing future employment.

“But when we asked what would happen at the end of the three months, which

was the end of April, we were told that no decision had been made and that it

would be reviewed before the period ends,” the source said.

The group then told the employees to stop the voluntary work from the end of

April and revert to full-time job searching.

But without any firm plan for their future, many of the staff are becoming

anxious about their prospects. “The longer we stay out of work, the harder it

will be for us to find another position,” said one of the employees affected by

the reorganisation.

“A lot of our skills are specific to Royal Mail and do not easily translate

into another working environment and we don’t have formal qualifications because

we barely received any training,” said the worker.

“The fact that our skills could be used in the business doesn’t matter ­ they

just wanted us to leave. They have been successful by getting rid of a lot of

employees with many years of service and taking on new people under a completely

different package,” said one ex-employee.

Around the time of the review, a large recruitment drive sought to bring in

people with skills that Royal Mail said it did not have, in such areas as

business partnering, service delivery and policy, methods and governance.

Royal Mail confirmed it hired more than 80 people last year as a result of

the programme.

But the drawn-out reorganisation is sapping morale, according to one former

IT employee, who chose to leave after turning down an offer of an alternative

post.

“From speaking to my ex-colleagues, I know IT management at Royal Mail is

perceived very poorly and that the whole department is now suffering. They are

not the trusted advisers they were once seen as,” said the former worker.

With the staff in limbo now able to compete for IT jobs, the other staff in

the department are being put in awkward positions, one Royal Mail worker told

Computing.

“It is difficult for the internal people, who are essentially going up

against ex-colleagues. This is grinding morale down further as people don’t want

to see their friends out of work ­ it is a vicious circle,” said the source.

Royal Mail declined to comment on the points raised by our sources, but a

spokesman said: “There is a variety of things that we do to help people whose

roles no longer exist in seeking opportunities internally and externally. What

we can say is that there isn’t anyone on a six-figure salary sitting around

doing nothing.”

Unite said it will ensure the arrangement with regards to surplus stays in

place. “If the process takes longer than expected, Royal Mail will have to work

with that,” said Scott.

Taken from here