Australia Post Adding Staff and Making Operational Changes to Manage Parcel Volume

Australia Post has repurposed and opened 15 new processing facilities and began recruitment for 600 casuals (temporary workers) into the network and call center to help manage the continued parcel delivery demand in the country during this coronavirus ( COVID-19) emergency.

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Parcel deliveries around the country have continued to average almost 2 million parcels per day since just before Easter.

These volumes have almost doubled in the last four weeks, up by 90 percent compared to the previous year, as more householders shop online as they self-isolate.

At the same time, demand for other core products, including letters, has been volatile, and many have halved.

Australia Post Acting Group Chief Operating Officer, Rod Barnes, said everyone was working hard to manage significant delays impacting the delivery of parcels.

“With our business adapting to the challenges the current pandemic presents, our normal practice of delivery has been impacted. We are experiencing significant delivery delays due to limited flights, hygiene and social distancing requirements in our network to preserve the community’s safety, and an increase in parcel volumes as more people shop online.”

 

Rod Barnes, Australia Post Acting Group Chief Operating Officer

Australia Post Experiencing High Parcel Volume

“For the last four weeks, we have been operating our processing and delivery services seven days a week, with our dedicated staff working on rotation over the 24-hour period, each day,” Barnes added.

Australia Post additional staffing has allowed it to accept and process an unprecedented 3 million parcels into facilities from ecommerce customers.

To help deliver parcels to customers’ doors, the postal service refocussed 700 of its people, a mix of posties and drivers from our StarTrack business, to provide additional van deliveries across the country.

Also, Australia Post has chartered an additional eight freighter flights, increasing this to 17 dedicated air freighter flights per day. These flights improved Express Post priority service deliveries across major capital cities by the next business day.

However, the reduced access on passenger planes continues to plaque the service, and despite its best efforts, it still cannot ensure the speed of deliveries at the same level as before the pandemic.

“Our people continue to work tirelessly under difficult circumstances, so we’re asking everyone to be kind and treat our dedicated people with the courtesy and respect they deserve – whether it be in a call center, Post Office or dropping your delivery off. Aggressive and abusive behaviour towards our people will not be tolerated.”

 

Rod Barnes, Australia Post Acting Group Chief Operating Officer

Regulatory Relief Helping Australia Post Manage Operations

Underlining its commitment to processing parcel volumes, Australia Post received regulatory relief from the Federal Government last week.

As letter volumes continue to fall, it announced a change in the frequency of metropolitan letter deliveries to every second day – which will free up posties to be retrained and redeployed into delivery vans to help process parcels.

This retraining of 2000 posties is part of a broader Australia Post response to manage significant disruption brought about by different lifestyles under coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions.

Australia Post is progressively making these changes and continues to look at ways to optimize its delivery network to meet the current demand of parcel volumes.

“The majority of parcels are still arriving on time, but we ask and thank our customers for their patience, as we work as hard as we can to get parcels to you as quickly as possible,” Barnes concluded.

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