Postmaster Consultation 2021
At the 'We’re Stronger Together' events in July 2020, Post Office Group CEO Nick Read discussed his commitment to build a genuine two-way partnership with Postmasters.
As part of this, Nick announced that we'll run a Postmaster consultation asking Postmasters how they want to be involved in our business and input in our business decisions. These are decisions which impact you so it’s important that your first-hand experience and expertise contributes to decision making that positively supports us all.
We appointed an independent agency, Quadrangle, to lead the consultation.
The consultation run from 21 September and will run for 12 weeks. This was the first time we are run a consultation of this type and scale with Postmasters.
The consultation run in 3 phases;
Phase 1 was initial interviews with 50 Postmasters, their feedback was built into Phase 2, a consultation survey. Phase 3 was the co-creation groups on the six priority areas – around 20 sessions were held.
Further information about each stage of the consultation is below.
Phase 1
Part 1: Postmaster interviews
As part of the first phase of the consultation process, we invited Postmasters to take part in consultation interviews. We were looking for approximately 50 Postmasters across the country for this phase, with each individual interview lasting approximately 45 minutes.
It is important the views and feedback provided during the consultation is fully representative of our diverse network, so we wanted to hear from Postmasters from a range of different groups.
Information about Phase 1, and invitation for Postmasters to come forward for Phase 1 was issued via Area Managers and published in the weekly Postmaster email sent to user registered on One website. You can read the full update here.
Part 2: Online noticeboard
We have over 8,000 independent Postmasters, so alongside the Postmaster interviews mentioned, we are invited Postmasters to share their views through our virtual noticeboard.
Information from both the interviews and the noticeboard was shared with the independent agency on a regular basis, and fed in to the wider network survey which we run in Phase 2.
Phase 2
Phase 2 of the Postmaster consultation was a national Postmaster survey which was shaped from the feedback some of you gave us in Phase 1.
This survey was open to all Postmasters from 10 December to 31 January.
In this survey, we asked questions about you, your business, your challenges and your ambitions and your views on how you want to contribute and be involved in future decision making.
This is one of the most critical surveys we have ever asked Postmasters to complete. The last time we completed a survey close to this scale was in 2016.
Phase 3
Phase 3 of the Postmaster consultation started with a debrief on the Postmaster survey (Phase 2) which was completed by 1,700 Postmasters.
Our research agency spoke to a small group of Postmasters to share the initial results to confirm the results and priorities areas identified. Postmasters endorsed the priorities.
Through the survey you raised six priorities areas which need the most improvement. Our focus now is to take action on these areas.
The priority areas are:
- Remuneration
- IT Systems & Processes
- Communications
- Training
- Access to senior management
- Innovation
Through Phase 3, we tested new models of engagement with Postmasters. We held co-creation sessions involving Postmasters and Post Office colleagues.
These are small working groups and the purpose of each session is to focus in more detail on the six priority areas above, and working together to find ways to improve them.