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    Success story

    Delivering workforce management transformation for one of the UK’s biggest employers.

    November 9, 2022

    Responsible for billions of deliveries annually, Royal Mail is the world’s longest established postal service and the UK’s largest employer in the industrial transportation sector.
    A vast hybrid of permanent and temporary workers, laboring around the clock across a network of regional sorting and distribution centers.
     
    The sheer scale of Royal Mail’s temporary and contingent workforce is a consistent challenge that’s further complicated by complex shift patterns, variable rates, tenure management, and compliance requirements.
     
    Together, these make worker management almost as logistically complex as the billions of deliveries Royal Mail makes each year.
     
    Royal Mail in numbers
    • Royal Mail delivers 10 billion letters and 1 billion parcels each year
    • The company employs around 160,000 full-time employees
    • The workforce includes an additional 10,000 temporary workers
    • Royal Mail recruits a further 17,000 workers to meet increased demand over Christmas
    • Logistics and sorting take place at 37 regional mail centers and seven distribution centers  
    • The volume of weekly shifts varies from 18,000 to 66,000.  
    The challenges ahead

    Royal Mail works with several staffing agencies to meet its dynamic, high-volume labor needs. Initially they implemented a £1 million vendor management system (VMS) supplied.

    After the VMS provider failed to deliver results, it soon became clear the VMS couldn’t cope with the complexity and scale of Royal Mail’s needs.

    They turned to JoinedUp by Beeline to replace its VMS and address their workforce management challenges:

    Scale

    The size of Royal Mail’s temporary and contingent workforce - numbering 10,000 to 30,000 across many sites at any given time - makes management inherently complex.

    Complex shift patterns

    Mail delivery is a 24/7 operation that needs shift-working around the clock with no scope for error in planning and fulfilling complex shift patterns.  

    Complex vendor chains

    Royal Mail relies on several staffing agencies to supply their temporary workforce. They had no consistent workflows for managing and dealing with their suppliers.

    Data quality and centralization

    With worker and vendor data siloed across several systems, Royal Mail lacked an accurate real-time view of their workforce and couldn’t plan ahead to meet varying seasonal demands.

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    JoinedUp has allowed Royal Mail Group to introduce a standardized platform for high-volume workforce management across our entire external agency base. It’s been an incredible collaboration and we look forward to continually evolving our partnership in the future.
    — Iain Everett, Head of Recruitment, Royal Mail Group
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    The JoinedUp solution

    JoinedUp by Beeline revolutionized Royal Mail’s temporary workforce management. Unlike their previous VMS, JoinedUp is designed to meet the needs of shift-based worker management at high volume. With JoinedUp, Royal Mail is now able to:

    Collaborate more closely with suppliers

    Our platform helps Royal Mail and their vendors see shift requirements at a glance and work more efficiently together to plan and fulfill ahead.

    Automate staffing plans

    Once workers are assigned to shifts, JoinedUp saves days of work by generating automated staffing plans in real-time. Supervisors across Royal Mail sites can access staffing plans and work with confidence knowing each shift is covered.  

    Record shift fulfillment and attendance

    With JoinedUp, Royal Mail can track and validate on-site time and attendance across each of its distribution and sorting hubs, ensuring accurate recording and pay for thousands of workers.

    Stay ahead of compliance

    JoinedUp features secure recording of workforce compliance and legal requirements like qualifications, eligibility to work, drivers’ license status and more. Managers can see at a glance that their workforce meets the UK’s stringent labor compliance requirements.

    Leverage workforce insights

    With its custom reporting functionality, JoinedUp gives Royal Mail data-driven insights about its business and labor needs. Royal Mail stakeholders use JoinedUp insight to make better-informed strategic decisions about their business and workforce.

    Real-world benefits

    With JoinedUp, Royal Mail has revolutionized their approach to high-volume, shift-based workforce management. In doing so, the organization has created cost and time benefits that have increased productivity for workers and suppliers. And will make sure Royal Mail remains efficient, profitable and competitive in the long-term.

    The stats - How JoinedUp continues to pay off for Royal Mail
    • Weekly time spent on payroll reduced from two days to under two hours across the organization
    • Payroll accuracy improved to 97%    
    • 100% real-time transparency to and from the site level
    • 100% clear and compliant audit trail, including
    • 100% accurate calculation of worker benefits, including holiday pay and fair shift distribution.
    Ready to revolutionize your workforce management with JoinedUp?
     
    JoinedUp by Beeline gives organizations a set of powerful tools that simplify Royal Mail’s shift-based workforce management. To find out how we can help your business, talk to the team.