Our people take pride in their work and PostNL makes a positive impact on society
Ensuring our people take pride in their work is vital if we are to be a responsible employer and remain a competitive business in today's changing market. Motivated people feel connected to the company and want to remain with us for the long term, help foster a positive work culture, reduce turnover costs, and increase productivity. For example, our Orange compass influences our culture and behaviour and helps us steer our organisation in the way we want to do business, supporting us as we create the right environment for people to carry out their work effectively and feel connected. We believe that by offering strong employee benefits, providing solid people support, and promoting health and well-being, we contribute to our people taking pride in their work.
During the year, 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 detailed insights into how we worked to attract and retain motivated people, how we helped our people grow and develop, the initiatives we undertook to create engagement across the company, and how we realised our HR strategy in 2023. For example, in the 'Hiring and retaining the right people' section we cover the many steps we took to retain and hire new people across both Parcels and Main in the Netherlands, and discuss the progress we made during the year.
PostNL aims to make a positive impact on society through our unique delivery network where our mail and parcel deliverers visit every street every day as well as through the PostNL Special Moments Fund to support projects that help reduce social differences.
Performance summary
We are a company that is represented by its people on a daily basis, as we deliver in villages, towns and cities across the Netherlands and Belgium. We are proud of the direct and indirect employment we provided to more than 50,000 people, on average, in 2023. Around 67% were our own employees and 33% were those employed through delivery and other partners. However, the tight labour market in the Netherlands continued to create challenges for the company, from filling mail delivery vacancies and attracting and retaining parcel deliverers, to filling IT and digital positions.
PostNL Headcount own employees Total number of PostNL employees
2022 - 2023
| Year ended at 31 December | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Headcount start of year | 37,365 | 35,647 |
| New hires | 7,866 | 7,662 |
| Turnover | 9,584 | 9,821 |
| Headcount closing balance | 35,647 | 33,488 |
At year end, we employed 33,488 people. Although we continuously aim for improving efficiency in our organisation and further automating our processes, the headcount drop was in large part due to the ongoing tight labour market, making it both difficult to recruit and, for some positions, retain the right people. We had, for example, over 1,200 vacancies at Mail in the Netherlands.
People attraction, development and retention
PostNL Employee engagement Share of engaged employees
2022 - 2023
| Year ended at 31 December | 2022 | Goal 2023 | 2023 | Outlook 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May survey | 80% | - | 72% | - |
| October survey | 77% | - | 64% | - |
| Average score | 78% | 78% | 68% | 64% - 67% |
In 2023, the average employee engagement score was 68%, while our goal for the year was 78%. While this is far below the level of engagement we aimed for, 2023 was a year of challenges and changes for many people across PostNL. This became clear from engagement scores at Mail in the Netherlands, where a combination of factors impacted our people. The tight labour market that led to employee shortages in certain functions increased pressure on our people, while the reorganisations that we are undertaking to adapt to a changing postal market have contributed to how engaged our people feel.
At Parcels, we saw contrasting engagement levels across departments. We were pleased to see that our Operations' employees reported an increase in the enjoyment and energy they get from their work, areas in which we placed a great deal of attention in 2023. We aim to learn from this approach and replicate it across other departments in 2024.
We also improved our employee engagement scoring method in 2023, helping us enhance the evaluation of the survey outcomes. More information on employee engagement can be found in the 'Strengthening employee engagement' section later in this chapter.
Health, safety and well-being
PostNL Absenteeism Percentage
2022 - 2023
| Year ended at 31 December | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Absenteeism (share of total working days) | 7.4% | 7.7% |
The physical and mental health and the safety of our employees, and the employees working indirectly for us, remained a top priority in 2023. However, absenteeism remained high, increasing compared to 2022. We further intensified our focus on tackling the issue across the company. While adhering to certain legislation limits on collecting and analysing data that could help us pinpoint specific causes of absenteeism, we undertook a number of actions to better understand and reduce absenteeism. These, and the steps we aim to take in 2024 to tackle the issue, are covered in detail under the 'Promoting health and well-being' section later in this chapter.