Yahoo Finance Senior Royal Mail executives leave a year after strike chaos
Two top executives will leave Royal Mail after Christmas as the postal service’s new boss seeks to stabilise the company in the wake of strikes.
Staff were told on Monday that Grant McPherson, the chief operating officer, and Zareena Brown, the chief people officer, are both leaving in the latest management shake-up since Martin Seidenberg replaced Simon Thompson as chief executive in October.
Mr McPherson will depart at the end of this month while Ms Brown will leave in March to take up a new role at an unnamed FTSE100 company, an internal email seen by The Telegraph says.
It comes as Royal Mail is attempting to improve performance and prevent delays this Christmas, after strikes by postal workers caused chaos last year.
Regulator Ofcom hit the postal service with a £5.6m fine for poor punctuality last month, just days before parent company International Distributions Services (IDS) blamed industrial action for a £319m half-year loss.
To ensure a smooth Christmas this year, Royal Mail has taken on thousands of temporary workers and extra vehicles, and offered staff a £500 bonus if they hit targets.
Mr McPherson and Ms Brown were both hired during Mr Thompson’s two-year period in charge and were seen internally as key lieutenants of the former Ocado executive, as he clashed repeatedly with the heavily unionised workforce.
The Communication Workers’ Union (CWU), which represents most of the 140,000-strong employees, welcomed the management reshuffle.
A spokesman said: “The changes are fundamental to building better relations and also restoring quality of service across the UK.”
Mr Seidenberg said Mr McPherson had indicated he would leave the company “a few months ago”.
In a company-wide email, he wrote: “I am hugely grateful for Grant’s dedication and absolute commitment to turning around Royal Mail over the last couple of years.
“Grant believes that it is the right time to hand over the leadership and we have been planning for the transition in recent months.”
He added that Ms Brown was an “exceptional leader who has overseen significant changes during a challenging period”, including changes to working conditions agreed with the CWU earlier this year.
Under the departing pair and their former boss Mr Thompson, Royal Mail pushed through changes designed to allow postal workers to deliver parcels later in the day.
This allows the company to more easily offer “next-day” delivery to retail customers.
But the changes to working conditions, which also included cuts to sick pay and closer monitoring of staff while on their routes, were described as a hostile attack on workers by the CWU.
After a campaign of industrial action, that affected last Christmas, the union’s members accepted much of what was proposed in exchange for a three-year pay deal that includes a 10pc salary increase and an element of profit-sharing.
Since privatisation, the service has witnessed the slow death of the letter as well as an increase in parcel volumes brought on by the rise of internet shopping.
At its peak, the Royal Mail delivered 21 billion letters a year, whereas it now it only delivers seven billion, and the number continues to drop by an average of 7pc per year.
It has prompted executives to seek to focus the company more on parcels, to better compete with the likes of Evri, DPD and Amazon.
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