Post Office to give bonuses despite staff feedback survey delay

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Service puts back workforce questionnaire on which part of the awards should have been based

The Post Office opted to give a chunk of bonus payments to hundreds of branch managers at the same time as it was carrying out redundancies, even though it had postponed an employee survey on which part of the awards should have been based.

The government-owned service, which was hit by a wave of industrial action last year, has delayed by several months a workforce “engagement” questionnaire that is usually undertaken in the first quarter of each calendar year.

The survey usually forms the basis for 20 per cent of an annual bonus for certain managers. However, this year the company decided this portion would “be assumed to have been achieved” when the bonuses are payable in June, according to internal communications seen by the Financial Times.

The Post Office, which remained in public ownership after the privatisation of Royal Mail in 2013, said it had deferred the survey to May to enable employees to give views on the company’s “recently changed structure and how well we have managed the transition”.

It confirmed that a “small number of managers” — 300, who mainly run branches — were told in January they would “not be adversely affected by a business decision beyond their control”. 

The decision came only weeks after strikes at some of the Post Office’s larger Crown branches, which it manages directly, during the run-up to Christmas. The walkouts were in opposition to the outsourcing of approximately a quarter of the 280 Crown offices to the private sector, the closure of a pension scheme and redundancies affecting about 2,000 of its 6,600-strong workforce since January 2016.

The Post Office declined to put a total value on the survey-related element of the annual bonus, saying no “incentive payments” for the financial year 2016-17 had yet been determined.

Andy Furey, national officer at the Communication Workers Union, called the reasons for cancelling the survey “spurious”. 

“The Post Office tried to placate their front-line managers by paying the 20 per cent bonus payment irrespective of the fact they knew the survey target would have been spectacularly failed,” he said.

“[It] is in denial of the crisis it has created and doesn’t want to hear what its workforce has to say about the way this vitally important public service is being managed into decline.”

The Post Office tried to placate their front-line managers by paying the 20 per cent bonus payment irrespective of the fact they knew the survey target would have been spectacularly failed

The Post Office said incentive schemes “for the overwhelming majority of managers” were centred on improving financial performance, reducing reliance on taxpayers and strengthening its ability to provide services to communities around the country.

Brian Scott of the Unite union, which represents about 730 managerial staff, said: “Because [the Post Office] has been unable to run the survey, they feel it would be wrong to withhold the payments at this late stage, particularly given the hard work that our members have put in during a difficult period.

“If they moved the goalposts, our members would be very unhappy, and quite understandably so.”

In spite of its industrial relations problems, the Post Office is close to breaking even for the first time in 15 years, Paula Vennells, chief executive, recently said. Some 97 per cent of its 11,600 branches are already run within the private sector.