The CEO of Royal Mail has warned that thousands of postal workers are off sick every day, costing the organisation around £200 million a year.
Speaking at The Times CEO summit on Thursday, Martin Seidenberg, the head of International Distribution Services (IDS), Royal Mail’s owner, said that around 6,500 postal workers out of a total of about 130,000 employees are off sick everyday.
“It has a cost to us, and of course an impact to you, to society, because of the quality that we can deliver or not deliver,” Seidenberg said, adding that this was “super important for us to fix”.
In response to its issues with sickness absence, the IDS has given all of its staff 24-hour access to an online GP, he said.
“We’ve been very surprised how heavily this is being used,” Seidenberg sai.
“We like it, because quite frankly, we believe that the sooner we can take care of our people and they have access to medical support, the sooner they’re likely to return to the job.”
Last month it was revealed Royal Mail had missed its delivery target for another year running, in the 12 months to March. It comes after after the postal service pledged to invest £500 million in improving its service.
Royal Mail said it had been a challenging start to the year, and that storms Goretti and Chandra, as well as more staff calling in sick from the flu, had affected its performance over the winter.
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Around 75.7% of first-class mail arrived the next working day, according to the latest quality of service report, which was slightly less than the 76.3% achieved in the prior year.
For second-class mail, 90.2% was delivered within three working days – less than the 92.2% achieved the year before.
Under the watchdog’s targets, 90% of first-class mail should be delivered the next day, and 95% of second-class mail should be delivered within three days.
Royal Mail was fined £21 million by Ofcom in October last year for missing its annual targets – the third-largest fine ever imposed by the communications watchdog.
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