Attract and retain motivated people

The growth in e-commerce and the transition in mail has an impact on everyone who works for or with us. Yet our people understand the vital role they play at PostNL and feel committed to making a real difference in a changing and dynamic market. We want to realise our people's full potential, and are focused on helping our customers as a strong and reliable partner while acting as a responsible employer.

In 2022 we updated our HR strategy, helping us continue to create a healthy company together. Operating in a sector undergoing profound change while facing an extremely tight labour market, this strategy will enable us to adapt to changing circumstances and invest in the future through our people. The strategy is built on two pillars:

1. We put our people first, where we focus on enhancing employee engagement and health & well-being
2. We help the organisation develop, where we focus on having the right people in place while realising change and creating agility.

The foundation of these two pillars is 'excellent HR services', which entails adhering to compliance, providing suitable employment conditions, reliable HR processes, and excellent people support. We consider compliance an important mechanism to safeguard sound business conduct, while protecting the rights and well-being of people who work with and for us so that we can operate commercially within predefined boundaries. In 2022 we continued to focus on regulatory compliance and operating in accordance with social laws, and had regular dialogue and collaboration with the Dutch labour inspectorate, including discussions on developments in labour regulations and inspections both within PostNL and among our delivery partners.

In this chapter we provide an overview of these and other topics that impact our people, while outlining how we realised our HR strategy in 2022 and helped our people grow and develop as they contribute to society.

Performance summary

We are proud of our company and the direct and indirect employment we provided to more than 50,000 people, on average, in 2022. Around 72% were our own employees and 28% were those employed through delivery and other partners.

PostNL Headcount own employees Total number of PostNL employees
2021 - 2022

At year end, the headcount of our own employees was 35,647. The headcount drop was partly due to the difficult labour market, making it tough to recruit. Despite this, across the company we were able to hire 7,866 new employees. While we saw a gradual decrease in the number of employees at Mail in the Netherlands, as the labour market became more difficult we partly offset the capacity decline by increasing the average contract hours of mail deliverers, although this remains challenging. We also agreed a new collective labour agreement (CLA) for nearly 16,500 mail deliverers and realised efficiencies in our operations. Workforce management and capacity planning continues to be an important activity in our social domain.

Engaged people

PostNL Employee engagement Share of engaged employees
2021 - 2022

In a very tight labour market, strong employee engagement is an essential aspect of being a successful organisation. As well as better employee retention, motivated people help drive company effectivity and are best placed to offer customers the high-quality services they demand. The average employee engagement score in 2022 was 81%, from 84% in 2021. While we evaluate the underlying scores in many different areas, the score from our survey in October was negatively impacted by work pressure due to staff shortages at specific locations.

In 2023 we will update our employee engagement scoring method, which will enhance the evaluation of the survey outcomes. Rescoring the 2022 results using the new method would result in an employee engagement score of 78%. We have set our Group target for 2023 at 78%, in line with the 2022 weighted average realisation.

Health and safety

PostNL Absenteeism Percentage
2021 - 2022

Our focus remained on the health and safety of our employees in 2022, and the employees working indirectly for us.

Our services have continued without interruption throughout the pandemic, and employees have indicated through surveys that they appreciate what we are doing. Despite the lessening impact of the pandemic in 2022, Covid-19 continued to affect absenteeism. We advised our people to take a precautionary approach and remain at home if they had any Covid-like symptoms. While this is done in the interest of the health of our people working in our operations, it impacted our absenteeism level. Delayed health care due to the pandemic also contributed to increased absenteeism.