Health & Wellbeing Programmes

Royal Mail Group

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Contents
Introduction............................................................................................................................ 3

About Royal Mail Group......................................................................................................... 3

Current programmes.............................................................................................................. 4

Aims of programmes.............................................................................................................. 5

Costs/ benefits....................................................................................................................... 7

Monitoring/ management........................................................................................................7

Evaluation/ Recommendations...............................................................................................8

Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 8

Reference............................................................................................................................. 10

Appendix.............................................................................................................................. 11

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Introduction
In this report I am going to examine the content & management of the Health & Wellbeing
programmes within the Royal Mail Group, it will include an evaluation of the benefits
exercise and lifestyle prescriptions can bring for the workforce & the Royal Mail Group. By
doing this report it will help me develop my knowledge and understanding of health, exercise
and wellbeing in a real situation, and to measure the effectiveness of my understanding of
these types of corporate programmes.

To start off the report I will give a brief background on the organisation and talk about its
“Ambitions” and also its financial status over the past few years. Then I will begin to analyse
its current programmes that are in place and the aims of these programmes trying to focus
on all the benefits they bring by being involved. Whilst analysing the programmes I will be
looking into the costs which are occurred and talk about whether it is really is beneficial to
the organisation. At all stages of the report I will try to discuss how the programmes are
monitored and managed. To conclude I evaluate the effectiveness of the programmes and
give my recommendations.

About Royal Mail Group

The Royal Mail Group is a state owned organisation which is responsible is for the collection
and delivery of all the mail within the United Kingdom. It was first created in 1516 by King
Henry the VIII but wasn’t able to be used by the public until 1635 thanks to Charles I. In the
present day Royal Mail is the national postal service and is made up of three companies,
being Royal mail, Post office and Parcel Force.

Currently Royal Mail Group is one of the UK’s largest employers with over 180,000 staff and
the organisation says that these people are their greatest asset and are vital to the future
success of the organisation (touching lives). For this reason Royal Mail Group has invested
heavily into Health & Wellbeing programmes so that they can improve attendance of the
colleagues which will help the business be more competitive within the industry and offer a
first class service.

The Royal Mail Group wants to lead all other organisations in their corporate responsibilities,
so the set five “Ambitions” to achieve this, they are:

1. Demonstrate equality and fairness throughout our workplace

2. Ensure unrivalled standards of safety in our workplace
3. Provide first-class support to improve and maintain the health of our colleagues

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 4. Make a positive social impact on colleagues, communities, customers and Suppliers
5. Become carbon neutral by 2015 and help our customers do business in an
environmentally sustainable and competitive way
(Touching lives)

Royal Mail delivered 84 million items every working day and had a network of 14,376 post
offices with revenue of £9.056 billion, and profits before tax were £312 million in 2006.(year
end account) but after that every year the organisation lost profits, which made them focus
even more on their corporate responsibility to save money but in the financial year 2008-9
Royal Mail had an operating profit of £321m, with all four group businesses in a full year
profit for the first time in two decades(increase profit report)

Current programmes
The Royal Mail Group has set very high aims for their corporate responsibility because they
really value their employees and for this reason they decided to invest heavily into offering
help and support by having health and wellbeing schemes in place. Following are some
examples of the schemes; I will give a brief explanation to what happens on the programme.
I’ve identified three main schemes which are:

 Health promotion programme

 Rehabilitation works programme
 Health bus

The health promotion scheme incorporates educating its workforce about physical, mental
and nutritional health within the work place. They did this by holding special meeting,
seminars and workshops in and around the main Royal Mail Group depots. This scheme is
what is responsible for all major depots around the country to have it own on-site gyms
which are offered to the staff for little or no cost at all. In addition also covered in this scheme
are risk management which covers the prevention and management of Musculoskeletal
Disorders, Stress and Mental Health, and Pandemic Flu occurrences (touching lives)

The Rehabilitation work programme is for the people who have been off work due to illness.
This scheme is specially designed to help provide help and support to those returning to by
offering early referral, occupational health advice and rehabilitation service for colleagues
(touching lives). This is a key scheme for the Royal Mail Group because they want to get the
staff straight back into work to help keep the company competitive and offer a first class
service. This scheme is proving to be very successful because figures show that the return

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for the company is 2.5:1, meaning for every pound the company spends rehabilitating its
employees they are saving 2.5 on other cost which are incurred through absenteeism ( Dr
Steve Boorman email). This programme has help 80% employees who suffered from
Musculoskeletal Disorders return back to work. (Touching lives)

The health bus is “a flagship for our national health promotion programme - it cost about
£50k and is a custom built and designed vehicle (Appendix 1) designed to be staffed by
health promotion nurses or run in partnership with charities .... We also run health fairs, local
health promotion events and national campaigns. The bus carries promotional materials, can
undertake health screening and can show PC or DVD based health information
programmes” (Dr Steve Boorman). This health bus is proving to be very successful for the
company by travelling to over 300 of its sites offering its services.

Aims of programmes
The Royal Mail Group a trend within all the aims and objectives because after looking on the
websites and reading all the publications available to me, it’s clear to see that the biggest
aim of the company is to look after their staff so it can stay competitive within the
marketplace and also to offer first class services to its customers. I believe this is the biggest
aim because in any publication where aims or targets are mentioned it always has the
statement that it’s to improve it competiveness and service.

Besides the aim mentioned above I found 3 other general aims set for the company which
are more towards attendance of employees within the organisation and getting morals within
the workplace: the 3 general aims are as follows:

 Promote healthy lifestyles

 Build a safety culture within the organisation
 Develop/ improve partnerships with Department of Health, Primary Care Trust and
Trade Unions
(Touching lives, connecting people)

After publishing these vague aims for the company, they then later published a set of more
in detail objective and how they were going to achieve them. They split the objectives down
into groups one being health objectives and the other being safety objectives. This ensure
that the aims are easy to understand and following. Following are the health and safety
aims:

Health-

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  Improve health risk management- they use the famous saying of prevention is
cheaper than the cure so they do regular risk assessments and ensure all measure
are in place for any incident which may happen.
 Helping colleagues return to work- this is what saw the introduction of the
rehabilitation programme to help staff return to work after a period of absence.
 Promote wellbeing-this aim is responsible for more promotion of physical, mental and
nutritional health across the royal mail group.

Safety

 Safety management- this made them review all current safety plans in place and
ensure they are relevant to current issues within the workplace
 Targeting the serious hazards within business- this will try to develop a programme
which will try to stop all serious accidents from occurring and address any concerns
arisen by them.
 Working in partnerships- this will be where they develop the relationship with Health
and safety executives, trade unions and staff to ensure everything can run smoothly
together without problems
 Training- this will train staff in the use and it benefits of working safely with the
workplace
 Monitor and review- they will constantly be monitoring and reviewing everything
going on in the company so that improvement can be made.

All these aims mentioned above are all trying to tackle the problem of absence within the
Royal Mail Group workplace because this problem of staff being off work and having to find
replacement cover was costing them millions which could be better spent elsewhere. By
looking at the LSE report it shows that a simple reduction of 1% in absence could save
£75.9m in cost (LSE report). So it is understandable why the Royal Mail Group is trying to
reduce absenteeism. The approach what the Royal Mail would use to get these aims to the
workforce is the carrot and stick idiom, which means the company will put benefits in front of
staff and as the go to get the rewards the pull along the company with it. So the company is
constantly moving forward towards achieving its better business competiveness and still
offer the first class service

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Costs/ benefits
The Royal Mail Group and its workforce will receive both physical benefits and financial
benefits from sticking to and all participating in the programmes offered. Firstly I will talk
about financial benefits because I have given a few financial figures already which helps you
understand how beneficial these programmes are proving to be. These benefits have only
really been seen since 2004 when the Royal Mail Group invested £46m on major
improvements and they received a return of £227m (appendix 2). So they received more
than quadruple return on their initial investment, which is mind blowing. They reason for
them getting such a big return was down to them successfully reducing absence from 7% to
5% in the years of 2004-2007, that equivalent of getting 3600 staff back into fulltime work
(LSE report)

Other non-financial benefits being received from these programmes being in place is that
absence within the organisation has greatly reduce and has remained that way even after
the programme had been first introduced meaning its very effective, also I believe that the
known saying of “healthy body, healthy mind” would be appropriate because if the workforce
is much more healthier they will be more focused on the task at hand and improve
productivity, profitability and performance. And all these benefits together will defiantly be a
key factor into improving the competitiveness within the market and offer a first class service.

Monitoring/ management
The Royal Mail Group needs to monitor very closely the staff that is being used because any
problems arising need to be identified and sorted out immediately to stop it affecting the rest
of the workforce. One of the reasons why staff absence needs to be monitor and managed
closely is because in the LSE report it states that agency staff are half as efficient that
normal staff which work there. Meaning that if anyone is off ill, they will b replaced by
someone who will be less productive and wouldn’t offer as good of a service to customers.

To ensure that the company is continually being competitive with the market and it’s moving
forward in the right direction, the Royal mail group constantly review:

 Health and safety policies and procedures

 The level of professional safety support within the business
 The competencies required to ensure that appropriate skills are matched to business
demands
 The process of how they work in partnership to improve health and safety provision

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Evaluation/ Recommendations
After looking at all the programmes and costs which are involved by running these for the
workforce, I believe it’s clear in the figures that these programme are doing what they are
intended to do and making the Royal Mail Group even more effective and efficient as time
goes on. The figures that I am referring are the ones that say since 2004 when £46m was
invested into these programmes, absence figures have dramatically dropped also which can
be seen by chart produced in the LSE report undertaken (Appendix 3). These graphs show
how the rate fluctuates but when the idea of the programme was first introduced you can see
it had an immediate effect and then after evaluation towards the end of the period
improvement where made and the 2% decrease in absenteeism was achieved by the Royal
Mail Group. This alone bring many benefits from being successful and will defiantly take the
organisation into the right direction of being more competitive with the market place and offer
a first class service to all customers.

The programmes are very successful and everybody knows this, so now many organisations
are using the Royal Mail Groups programmes and scheme as a blue print to making their
own strategies and become more successful. So the fact that the Royal Mail group is now a
flagship for corporate responsibility indicate their success but it leaves me with the dilemma
of thinking that after all this success and the organisation become much more competitive
and efficient within the marketplace, how do the carry on this success in the future? So they
do still lead the way, as they soon won’t have any competition to help them develop further.
Also I think the programmes in place are done all they can because to target the remaining
5%, which are still being absent from work, will require a lot more help than what is currently
being offered so to reduce it further the Royal Mail Group may yet again have to invest a
large sum of money to develop an appropriate scheme but they already have the staff to do
it as they already have specialist doctors and nurses who can help to make these
programmes and get them initiated.

Conclusion

In this report I have examined the programmes in place and looked into the cost and benefits
which have arisen by putting these programmes into operation and all the figures point to
one conclusion that the Royal Mail Group is very successful with it and defiantly ranks their
corporate responsibility highly. All I think that the Royal mail group has to consider now is

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how to continue this success and reduce the figure for absenteeism further, but as I have
said I believe reducing this figure much further would bring up lots of difficulties.

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Reference

 Report and Accounts Year Ended 26 March 2006". Royal Mail Holdings plc. 2006. p.
pps. 2 & 11. http://www.royalmail.com/portal/rm/content1?
catId=23300505&mediaId=23300508#13900287. Retrieved 2009-02-28.
 Royal Mail Group increases profit in the face of tough market and economic
conditions but challenges remain". Royal Mail Group. 2009-05-14.
http://www.news.royalmailgroup.com/article.asp?id=2534&brand=royal_mail_group.
Retrieved 2009-05-14.
 Rude for health
 Touching lives
 Royal mail.com

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Appendix
1) The health bus photos.

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 2) This is the copy of an email between me and Dr Steve Boorman, who is head of
corporate responsibility at Royal Mail Group.
Liam

I have entered some responses in text below - it may help you to Google
"the value of rude health" - LSE did a formal economic assessment of our
health programmes independently a few years ago and showed the costs and
returns on investment and impacts on quality and sales - the headlines were
£46mil invested over 3 years with £227mil measured return

regards

Steve

Dr Steven Boorman
Director Corporate Responsibility,
Royal Mail Group
01252 -806610
Fax 01252 806612
Dear Steve

I am a University of Hull student studying towards a degree in Sport and

Leisure Management, one of my modules is called Health & lifestyle. Within
this module I have been given an assignment to which I have to compile a
report after examining the content & management of an organisations Health
& wellbeing programmes then evaluate it, commenting on the benefits to the
workforce and organisation.

My reason behind emailing you is because I have read the "Touching lives,
connecting people" report and found this very useful but it has left me
with a few blank areas which I was hoping you could help me find the
information. Following are some brief questions which I would appreciate if
you could help me answer:

*            what is the cost of using your programmes in place for the
employees?

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 None for most of them - we offer free to employees as part of our overall
employment package (i.e. as an employee benefit and because they also help us
as a business improve quality and efficiency - see LSE report referred to
above). Occasionally.... usually when using a partnership with a provider
we don't use regularly or for additional elements above and beyond our core
programme we will give employees opportunity to get discounted rates in
local gyms, or for onsite things like head massage or aromatherapy, but
most core programmes are free

*            how do you promote these programmes to the employees? when

they begin employment are they informed about everything available or do
they have to see advert and look themselves

our feeling first class health promotion programme has a communications

strategy as part of it - we use all channels of communication, in house
newspaper, plasma screens in large offices, entries on payslips, even
occasionally the stamp cancellation mark ... on joining employees get
leaflets and info and our intranet site has much information and portals to
allow employees to access our self help systems, we also have "champions"
who we train to act as sign posts and coaches often as an extended role for
first aiders

*            are the programmes run at a profit or a loss to the company?

e.g. maybe run at a loss but it makes up the money by reducing absenteeism

See the LSE work - our programmes are carefully evaluated - the return on
investment for our rehab facilities for example are 2.5:1 so for every £1
we spend we save 2.5, we measure returns on hard costs such as absence
turnover and retirement savings and on soft such as employee engagement and
satisfaction scores too

*            in the "Touching lives, connecting people" report, a health

bus is mentioned. Where can I find out more information on the service this
provides and cost etc.?

The health bus is merely a flagship for our national health promotion
programme - it cost about £50k and is a custom built and designed vehicle

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 (picture below) designed to be staffed by health promotion nurses or run in
partnership with charities.... we also run health fairs, local health
promotion events and national campaigns. The bus carries promotional
materials, can undertake health screening and can show PC or DVD based
health information programmes

(See attached file: healthbus.ppt)

in addition to answering these questions if you know of any information

which would be useful, I would be greatly thankful if you could let me
know.

Royal Mail has employed doctors and nurses for nearly 150 years and
developed pro-active health promotion campaigns from particularly 1980 or
so onwards..... in the major corporate turnaround between 2002-5 they
were a key part of helping us engage with our staff and we have good
information that they improve our attendance rates and therefore help us
deliver the quality of service our customers need from us - sickness
absence is hugely important to a massive operation like ours and a small
reduction (0.1%) can save us many millions of pounds on our bottom line

thank you for taking your time to read my email and hope to hear from you
shortly whether you can help me with this information or not.

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 3) Sickness absence by monthly reporting period 2003-2007. The vertical bars

show April of each year.

4) Note on sickness absence data. Sickness absence is derived from hours of

sickness absence divided by total contracted hours and adjusted by a factor of 0.9 to
take account of annual leave. Data for the earlier period relate to the whole of Parcel
force Worldwide, and were included in the Business in the Community Award
application, whereas those for the second relate to employees in depots. Notably,
they cover about 3000 employees in these, omitting about 1000 employees in the
Coventry Hub and elsewhere in Parcel force Worldwide the data for early years of
the more recent series had to be extracted from archives, and exclude employees
who left more than three years before the extraction date, in this case, December
2007. Another factor affecting depot-level information for the earlier years is that the
current statistical system for monitoring absence was in the process of being set up
then, with the aim of improved reporting and better comparability between depots.
This was still in process in 2004, and could further affect comparability between the
two series. (The value for Rude Health pg.11)

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