Royal Mail, Youth and Diversity

Young Workers October 16 2015

On 12 October, a delegation lead by young CWU members working for Royal Mail met with national diversity manager Kay Clements at the business’s headquarters in London.

The session represented a number of “firsts” – the first time RM’s Diversity programme ah explicitly considered young people. The “first” delegation of young reps to meet the company at a national level in nearly 10 years. And the first time the youth reps had ever been involved in a meeting like this!

National Youth Committee memberGary Dawpicks up the story:

The meeting was set up to look at issues affecting young people in Royal Mail and what stops young people joining Royal Mail. In addition to this, Kay Clements who is the Diversity and Inclusion National Manager for Royal Mail stated that she wanted the National Youth Committee’s input on the Youth Steering group Royal Mail are planning to start up.

We started the meeting by suggesting to Kay reasons why we believe young members become disillusioned with life as a Royal Mail employee. I will go through some of the main reasons we felt this was the case:

Part Time And Fixed Contracts:

This is the number one issue we feel stops young people staying at Royal Mail. Young people being brought into the company on 20 hour contracts and quickly finding out that there is little to no hope of securing a full time contract within the company. We also stated we felt that Royal Mail’s current use of part time contacts contradicted the company’s values of being a good employer. Kay agreed that part time contracts are a big issue however; she did state that this is an I.R issue and one she cannot really tackle herself.

Training:

We also stated we felt the training currently set out within Royal Mail was poor and inadequate, especially within deliveries. We made Kay aware that you only get 3 to 4 days worth of training before you are left to your own devices, then if lucky enough to be moved on to prep a delivery there is little to no training involved.

Youth Officer Role

We stated to Kay that the youth officer role needs real recognition if Royal Mail are ever to take the youth sector seriously. We set out how it is sometimes easier for a younger person to open up to someone of a similar age rather than a manager or aging unit rep. We know that securing any release for all youth officers would be difficult but suggested that if the National Youth Committee, or perhaps one youth officer in each region (to whom young members would be “signposted” when they needed advice or support) could secure release when needed this would be a great start.

Work Time Listening and Learning:

This is an area in which we all agreed more action is needed. Many young members are unfortunately on part time contracts and as a result many miss out of WTLL sessions. This leads not only to a gap in training and development, but a huge health and safety risk and members are not receiving the information needed to do their job safely.

Company Messages Not Filtering Down:

This was another major issue. We feel that messages on career development,whether into manger’s roles or into different sectors such as HGV driving, are not advertised well enough and often do not reach the floor. Many company messages seem to just get stuck at managerial level and never get told or received by the operational staff. This leads to a lack of engagement from the staff and the business.

We then went on to look at how we re-engage with young members and attract new young people into the company. These are the main things we came up with:

Cadet Scheme:

Many of you may remember the old cadet scheme ran by Royal Mail. We feel something such as this should be brought back to the company. We feel it would bring back hope of a full time job to young members and also end the nearing skills gap when older members retire. A proper apprentice scheme would be welcomed by the CWU National Youth Committee.

Advertise Company Benefits More:

We feel that a page on the back of theCourieris not enough to publicise all the great benefits you can obtain by working with Royal Mail. Kay agreed and suggested adding a benefits page to the “My Royal Mail” website.

Advertise Good Work Done:

At the moment we see the positive side of Royal Mail and it’s employees celebrated on Royal Mail TV. We feel that it would be good if this achievement could be shown to the wider public and not just people employed by Royal Mail. We feel seeing this positive side would attract young people to the brand and make them want a career with the company. Kay suggested that Royal Mail is looking at going into schools and talking about working for the company. This is an area I believe CWU Youth and Royal Mail can work together.

What will happen next?

Kay told us that the steering group will be made up of between 12 and 25 young employees and a senior sponsor from Royal Mail. Their first meeting will take place in January and they will be tasked with finding solutions to problems facing young employees. The CWU National Youth Committee welcomes any act by Royal Mail to improve the young worker’s voice within Royal Mail.

I will end my report with a line from someone at the meeting: RM needs to understand that it is not just the company’s future you are planning, but it is our future you are planning too.

Gary Daw

National Youth Committee
South West Representative

With Gary at the meeting were Youth Committee members Alan Bebbington, Jordan Craig and Becca Hufton, plus NEC member Mahmood Ali, Senior Organiser Lynne Brown and National Officer Simon Sapper. Apologies were received from Colm McCauley and Ben Abrams