Invest in our people to enhance employee engagement, health & well-being and create positive societal impact

At PostNL, our people are at the heart of everything we do. As the backbone of our operations, investing in their growth, engagement, and well-being is essential to achieve our strategic goals and ensure long-term success. By fostering an inclusive and supportive work environment, we not only provide equal treatment and opportunities for all, but also enhance employee satisfaction and strengthen our ability to deliver high-quality services to customers across the Netherlands and beyond. Engaged employees are more motivated and productive, helping us to remain agile and resilient in an evolving market landscape.

By promoting physical and mental well-being, offering flexible working arrangements, and encouraging a healthy work-life balance, we aim to ensure that our workforce remains engaged and committed while reducing absenteeism. This investment in well-being not only improves individual performance but also contributes to a positive and collaborative work culture that directly benefits our customers and our partners in the value chain.

But our commitment extends beyond our people in the workplace. By investing in initiatives to help our delivery partners, employing people with a distance to the labour market, and through the PostNL Special Moments Fund, we work to create a positive societal impact while minimising negative impacts, contributing to a more sustainable and socially responsible business.

Internally, the PostNL Staff Foundation plays a vital role in supporting our employees, from organising events such as running a marathon with colleagues, to providing advice and (financial) assistance when needed. We believe we have a moral obligation to contribute positively to society. This holistic approach aligns with our purpose-driven strategy, ensuring that PostNL continues to grow while making a meaningful difference in society.

An important tool in identifying and addressing those areas that are most relevant to us is our double materiality assessment (DMA). Among other topics, the DMA helps us understand the broader social implications of our business activities and their related impacts, risks and opportunities. Key performance indicators (KPIs), such as employee engagement and absenteeism, are vital metrics that allow us to monitor the effectiveness of our initiatives and ensure that we are addressing the needs of our workforce, contributing to a more resilient and sustainable business. More information on how we tackled absenteeism and worked to improve engagement in 2024 can be found in the Our workforce section of this chapter.

Additionally, our focus on employee engagement and absenteeism links directly to our commitment to uphold human rights through our human rights policy and additional due diligence, as shown in the picture on the next page. We are dedicated to creating a safe, respectful workplace, in line with international standards such as the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights to Work, the OECD Guidelines and the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

In 2024, we strengthened our human rights policy to reflect our updated governance on human rights across our operations, subsidiaries, and value chain, including delivery partners, consumers, and end-users and address key social sustainability issues. PostNL has been a signatory to the UN Global Compact since 2012, and our focus lies on the impact we have along our entire value chain and the way we work with our partners to tackle a broad range of topics. More information can be found in the Our policies of the Social disclosures in the Sustainability statement.

To better understand the role our people and PostNL play in the e-commerce business and postal value chain, and where we impact society, please see the Our value chain section earlier in this report.

To realise our social strategic goal, 'Invest in our people to enhance employee engagement and health & well-being and create positive societal impact', we are concentrating on the following four focus areas:

• Our workforce
• Workers in the value chain
• Positively impact society
• Consumers and end-users.

More information on our strategic goals can be found in the Our strategic objective and goals section of the Strategy chapter earlier in this report.

At year end, we employed 32,405 people. While our ongoing efforts to improve organisational efficiency and advance process automation remain key priorities, the reduction in headcount was largely a consequence of the ongoing tight labour market, which has made recruiting and, for certain roles, retaining the right people increasingly challenging. For instance, at Mail in the Netherlands, we had over 750 vacancies at year end, despite filling over 4,900 vacancies across the company during the year. This underscores the scale of our recruitment efforts. However, dedicated programmes have been instrumental in addressing this issue, helping us reduce the number of vacancies and strengthen our workforce in critical areas.

People attraction, development and retention

PostNL Employee engagement Share of engaged employees
2023 - 2024

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At Mail in the Netherlands, the tight labour market led to employee shortages in operational functions, increasing work pressure. Additionally, the ongoing high absenteeism levels and the reorganisations that we are undertaking to adapt to a changing postal market influenced the engagement of our people. We intensified our focus on these points throughout 2024.

At Parcels, engagement levels presented a more varied picture across departments. We were encouraged by the positive results from Commerce, where we saw a 2 percentage point increase in engagement between October 2023 and October 2024.

Health, safety and well-being

PostNL Absenteeism Percentage
2023 - 2024

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The physical and mental well-being, as well as the safety of our employees and those working indirectly for us, remained a key priority throughout 2024. Absenteeism of our employees increased to 8.5% in 2024. In response, we continued several targeted actions to better understand the underlying causes of absenteeism. These initiatives aim to not only reduce absenteeism but also create a healthier, safer, and more supportive work environment for all our people. Full details can be found in the Our workforce section below.

“At PostNL, our people are at the heart of everything we do”