The Post Office has rewarded £871,000 to postmasters in its first payout under the new Operational Excellence Incentive scheme.
The initiative, which kicked off in August, is an opportunity for postmasters to earn up to 5% more of their monthly pay cheque by hitting operational requirements such as daily cash declarations and cash pouch remittances. These are scored via a points-based system.
September marked the first time postmasters received a boost in their remuneration, based on August’s trading activity, with 83% of branches qualifying. The average payout was 3.5% of their monthly earnings, while 2,960 branches, of the 11,500 overall, received the full 5% payment.
The rewards will now be dished out to postmasters every month until March. For postmasters that did not meet the threshold last month, the Post Office is offering further support and advice to incentivise them in meeting the requirements.
September’s trading was expected to yield a higher payout than August’s, Post Office said, with qualifying postmasters receiving an average 3.62% of their earnings. There are also 3,288 branches that have achieved “a perfect score” in September for meeting operational requirements, which will get the full 5% payment.
The Post Office is currently calculating the full sum to be rewarded to postmasters for September’s trading activity.
It said back-office activities were creating a growing workload for postmasters, and therefore launched the initiative to reflect its ongoing commitment to improve branch profitability and driving further improvements to remuneration. Remuneration is based on different products sold, such as first class, tracked or next-day delivery services.
Postmaster Steven Boyd, based in Plymouth, participated in the pre-launch period and received the maximum 5% remuneration for the August trading period.
“The last few months have been incredibly valuable for the running of my branches because of the clear breakdown of data we’ve been provided each month, which has given us the guidance we need to get our processes to the strongest place to receive the highest percentage of remuneration,” he said.
“Since the incentive was announced, we’ve been able to identify areas that required our attention, increasing the percentage of ‘rem’ we’d likely receive at all of my branches.
“The incentive is celebrating work that we have always done, and it really feels like Post Office is engaging with us postmasters in a transparent way to get it right, all with the same collective goal. We can’t accurately predict how many people will come into our branches each month and how much money they spend – but one element we can take control over is how effectively we can complete our back-office processes.”
Post Office retail operations director Pete Marsh said: “We are committed to support postmasters as they consistently look to improve their branch profitability and their remuneration.
“It’s encouraging to see the already hugely positive results from the incentive, with performance ahead of where we initially had anticipated. Postmasters sit at the heart of Post Office and by incentivising them to meet existing operational requirements for the running of their branch we can both directly reward them but also create a win/win cycle where savings generated can fund further remuneration improvements.”
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