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Criteria Management Best Practice People like to hear 'she leads by example' It sounds like something you should say about someone you think is a good manager and what you would like to hear said about yourself. I believe this is my style. I work with my staff in all areas and reap the benefit through their dedication to making our work centre successful. Part of the day to day management of the volume of customers and mail through our Business Centre is to all work together and do what needs to be done. We are a Business Centre. My role differs a little from the Managers of our Post Shops. Our main focus is looking after the needs of a business as a whole rather than individuals. We seek new business by visiting customers, listening and asking questions of the business customers who come into our shop and using promotions directed to business customers. My staff see their role in our office as a big part of the overall contribution of a large corporation. I appreciate their commitment and I believe that they feel a certain loyalty to me. The five drivers always help each other out when customers have large mail outs that can hold them up from their schedules and the counter officers can all drive the vans if required. We recently completed a complete restructure of our courier runs. Over the past few years we have picked up new customers who want their mail collected from their Post Office box and delivered to their residential address and their outgoing mail collected in the afternoon. The runs became 'pear shaped' as we fitted them in as best we could. It had reached a stage where we could not fit in any new business and we knew we needed to change. Advising the drivers of my plan was met with a little resistance from a couple of them. I assured them they would be involved in the process and asked for advice and comment. Understanding the reasons behind this decision eased their fears. I chose one of my staff to look at all the runs and come up with a rough plan that she thought would work by dividing the areas into three large football ovals and trying to only turn left! Looking back, my choice for this job was a wise one because she had all the information about all the runs in her head and quickly came up with a plan. The Sales Consultant in our area wanted to be involved because she needed to familiarise herself with where all the drivers are at any given time to assist her in her job. The supervisor of the drivers and myself then took to the roads over a period of weeks to fit everything in at the times both the customer and Australia Post desired. We visited or called each customer to explain what we were doing and why, and to ask them how flexible they could be to assist us, keeping in mind their requirements as well. This gave us an opportunity to speak with our customers and ensure we were looking after them properly. Everyone was most agreeable, we met the challenge and came up with five new runs. We then took the drivers for a drive of their new runs and asked them to see if they thought it would work and if we needed to make any changes. All were positive and even excited about the changes. The data base was updated and we were ready to go. The results of this change apart from the practical way they were arranged have enabled us to structure our part time hours in such a way that we can take on extra business and increase the hours as required without having to pay our full time staff overtime to do the same work. Keeping all our ad hoc collections between the hours of 10.00am and 2.00pm again allows us to use our part time time staff and does not encroach on our structured runs. In the past this caused concern to our drivers who felt the need to rush to meet timetables. Overtime was also incurred. This is, of course, not conducive to running a business profitably. It also encroached on our Duty of Care and OHS. Criteria Communication Capability Communication Australia Post is a self-funding Government Business Enterprise. We make the best use of our profits to reinvest in our business and at the same time we service the Australian Community by meeting our community service obligations to provide --------a universal letter service which is equally accessible to all Australians. --------a standard letter service at a uniform price from and to anywhere in the country. Australia Post employs over 36,000 full-time and part-time staff, handling over 5 billion articles of mail every year and servicing more than 9.2 million delivery points nationally. Our organisation is responsible for the nations largest retail network with 4,497 outlets. We service an average of 1.06 million customers who visit a Post retail outlet every business day. That is a lot of information about Australia Post. When I am speaking to a new employee on their first day I give them this information. I want them to know from the start that their work in our Business Centre is important and part of something special. This year Australia Post celebrates 200 years of operation. Australia Post recently initiated a nation wide staff attitude survey. Some of the categories were --------Engagement – supporting the goals and values of the company and aligning to its culture. Being proud of and promoting the ------------------------company. --------Leadership – management providing direction and communicating the vision. Encouraging employees to give their best. --------Employee empowerment – employees believing they have sufficient authority and flexibility to do their job and being involved in ------------------------decisions. Supervisors are receptive and responsive to suggestions for change. --------Change management – being worried about restructures and frequency of change causing difficulties. The changing direction of ------------------------the business is understood by employees and adequately communicated and supported by the company. The Cairns cell of Retail North QLD results were outstanding in all categories with the best results in Queensland. Of the 14 categories not one had an unfavourable result. Communicating this to the staff was a great pleasure to me and a source of pride for them as well as me. People Management I consider my people skills to be my strength. I like talking to people. In a work enviroment I know I have good knowledge of our products and services. I can provide our customers with help and usually a solution in any area including customer complaints. Australia Post has a clear code of ethics, employee counselling and discipline process. I always listen and remain calm when addressing issues. One of my managers showed me the “feel, felt, found” strategy and I always find it helpful in any situation. I have been fortunate not to have been involved in too many counselling issues. I have found that the first step in our counselling process which is face to face discussion can usually solve the problem at hand and avoid any issues from escalating. All staff are offered a development plan for their careers. I discuss with them their short and long term goals and we put together a plan, a review date and and a completion date. Australia Post has an online performance support system and each month a subject is selected for all staff including managers to mark themselves as competent or in need of further training. We address these on a one on one basis. The end result of this training can result in Industry Certification. In my office I ask the counter officers to take charge of the stock ordering and receipts, wages input, the office balance and financial internal control checks. It took me some time to become adept at delegating. I had to change my view of asking someone to do work that was my responsibility to one of training staff to grow in skill and confidence which will benefit my Business Centre and ultimately the organisation. I also encourage our drivers to be involved in our promotions. Processes are constantly changing and we receive new information daily on a variety of subjects. We have regular team briefs to ensure everyone is up to date at all times. Criteria Financial Finesse All sectors of Australia Post have a budget. We have key performance indicators on which we are measured. The best way to meet our budget is to increase our revenue. We are at a disadvantage in our office in that we have no passing traffic. We have to walk the delicate line of giving our customers what they want and need so that they return while ensuring we are receiving what we need for our business growth. Australia Post has initiated a Retail Balance Scorecard. Every office can, on a daily basis, access their scorecard and see how they are performing. It is a valuable tool to see where we are doing well and where we need to improve. It is coded in red and green and we all want the scores to be green. Our aim is always to change any red to green! We are able to view areas and products that affect our key performance indicators (KPIs). Some examples are passport errors, cash management, individual product sales, customer service, customer satisfaction, labour to sales ratio, average daily sales, total customers, agency transactions, stock turn, gross profit margin%, RPR (retail profitability report) net profit or loss and post office boxes let % growth. There is a lot to take in these reports and they can be confusing sometimes. I look at the things that can affect these results and talk to the staff about them. An example would be to look at our budget for the month for Express Post. I take the dollar value and divide it by the working days in the month. I divide that total by two which is the number of counter terminals we have. That provides each counter officer a much less frightening number of sales to achieve for each day and a little friendly rivalry ensues. Another area we work hard at is our Priority Customer result. Monthly we have a Mystery Shopper assess our service. There is a criteria involving greetings, appearance, product knowledge, sales ability and customer satisfaction. I am proud to say we are always in the green in this area of our Retail Balance Scorecard. Due to our many agency customers we implemented 'product champions.' One staff member will learn everything about the product. They in turn can then answer questions other staff may have about the product and we can call on that person to assist us when we are dealing with a customer who may benefit from their expertise. We are currently running 'The Great Race around Australia'. We have a large map on our wall and we earn 'miles' through the results of various promotions through the year. We are fortunate that Australia Post provides us with the product, the information, all the point of sale necessary to help us achieve our budgets. Cutting costs also helps achieve budget. Expenditure has to be monitored carefully and is one of our KPIs. We have made changes in our office to realign staff to reduce overtime. Australia Post now has a stock ordering process which is almost completely automatic and an order is generated weekly based on previous sales. I monitor all the expenditure in our office carefully. We are all great recyclers and reuse everything we can including used copy paper, string, rubber bands, bubble wrap and cardboard. The financial year 2009 was not our most successful year. As a Business Centre we run a fleet of vans and unfortunately our bottom line was affected by unexpected costs in this area. We started the new financial year with renewed enthusiasm and two new vans! |