Royal Mail Christmas on a hiring spree: 33,000 positions added to handle festive rush

Summary

• According to Royal Mail, the temporary workers during the Christmas period will be required to manage the additional traffic of parcels and other delivery requests
• Royal Mail is eyeing “proactive and detail-focused” people, however, a previous working experience in a similar role is not mandatorily required
• England has the greatest number of open roles for temporary workers with a vacancy of nearly 13,000 sorting posts

London-headquartered postal services company Royal Mail Plc (LON: RMG) has decided to hire additional temporary staff due the festival season around Christmas to help sort out parcels from an increased amount of online shopping. Royal Mail is likely to hire as many as 33,000 additional workers for its various departments. 

Analysts believe 2020 will see more than 50 per cent of shopping online and therefore, additional staff is required to handle the surge. Royal Mail regularly adds multiple temporary positions during the festive season period every year between October and January. But the hiring remains well below 25,000 persons. This year in a first, Royal Mail has decided to employ nearly 33,000 temporary workers aiming to have smoother services with a relatively better arrangement for the festive quarter. Most temporary workers employed are likely to be engaged in departments, such as the data centres and delivery vans. 

Earlier in October, Royal Mail launched the doorstep parcel collect service to address the dearth of business due to the coronavirus pandemic. Royal Mail’s doorstep parcel collect service, touted as one of the biggest structural changes, a customer is able to book doorstep parcel pick-up by paying a fee of 72p over and above the standard postage costs. 

Christmas cheer

With the back-to-back pre-emptive steps, Royal Mail is leaving no stone unturned possibly with an intention to retrace back its business on the growth trajectory. Sources said the temporary workers will be required to manage the additional traffic of parcels and other delivery requests. With the Covid-19-led environment and the reimposition of several restrictions on travel, people are likely to stay in their respective habitats during the Christmas festival period. 

As a result of which, a high volume of Christmas letters, cards, giftings, parcels, deliveries and doorstep pick-up requests are being anticipated along with other related services provided by the Royal Mail.

The work opportunity with Royal Mail around the festive period is largely flexible and requirement based as the company deploys additional hands for assisting their regular staff in core operations and busiest departments. 

Talking about salaries, Royal Mail said the average salary would depend on the area where the worker lives. So for a Christmas temp job in London, the hourly salary is between £9.50 per hour and £11.46 per hour. Similarly, for a Maidstone or Birmingham worker, the remunerations would be between £8.72 per hour and £9.40 per hour.

Royal Mail said it invites applications from all the employable age groups to fill the temporary roles. The company is eyeing “proactive and detail-focused” people for the temporary positions. Individuals with knowledge and experience of a warehouse set-up or sorting work would be preferred. 

Jobs boom

England has the greatest number of vacant positions for temporary workers with nearly 13,000 openings. Most of these workers will be aligned with the permanent teams like the mailing, distribution and data centres across the state. 

Other than England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland nearly have 1,400, 700 and 500 open positions for temporary workers, respectively. About 7,200 temporary staff are likely to be appointed in the logistics division of Royal Mail with nearly 1,800 positions available at the Royal Mail’s international centre at Heathrow airport. Approximately 5,000 workers will work as delivery drivers to assist and address the heightened uptick in the services.

Royal Mail Group’s express parcel wing Parcelforce Worldwide has been also seeking workers on a temporary basis during the Christmas quarter with an addition of nearly 2,000 temporary workers in various roles. Most of the workers are likely to be aligned with drivers and indoor workers of the business. Nearly a thousand of the fresh staff is likely to be deployed with the Royal Mail’s Covid-19 testing kit collection team. 

Stock performance

Royal Mail shares have extended the decline after opening in negative territory on Monday, 26 October after the company’s announcement to hire a huge workforce for the Christmas period.

The stock of Royal Mail plunged as much as 3.65 per cent to hit a day’s bottom of GBX 240.4 from the previous closing price of GBX 249.50 per share. Nearly 852,565 equity shares of Royal Mail have exchanged hands until 12:06 pm translating into a turnover of over £1.5 million. 

Stock Performance: Royal Mail Plc

Source: Thomson Reuters