One of Australia’s most-loved brands, Australia Post, has played an integral role in the lives of all Australians by providing essential services for over 200 years.
We needed to harness the power of Australia Post’s values, connect front-line team members to Australia Post’s strategy, and give front-line leaders skills to empower their teams, leveraging the pride and care Australia Post team members feel for their job to deliver ‘customer-obsessed’ service every day.
Our challenge
The last few years have tested Australia Post and its people. Its core businesses, delivering mail and local post office transactions, are in decline in both volume and profitability. As a government business enterprise, Australia Post must reinvest all profit.
Its main challenge is to deliver profitability and focus on growth while facing major structural changes, coupled with changing customer and community expectations; customers care about the future of our planet, want free, fast parcel returns, and processes that are easy to use.
Along with a new CEO, Australia Post is undergoing a monumental transformation to reimagine the post office, shifting –
From: “A mail business that delivers some parcels” (a declining letters business).
To: “A parcel business that delivers some mail” (investing in the booming parcel business).
Our solution
Against this backdrop, Australia Post created the Post26 strategy built around three imperatives:
- Supporting our people
- Delighting our customers and communities
- Creating a sustainable future
To make Post26 a reality, Australia Post needed to activate the vital ingredient… its people! Throughout its history, Australia Post’s workforce has been at the core of what makes Australia Post successful.
To achieve this, we created Our AP Way, a multi-year engagement programme.
Our AP Way identified the cultural pillars to hold onto, the attributes to build or amplify, and the cultural aspects which needed bypassing.
We articulated our vision and journey through a visually engaging, repeatable, one-page story, giving everyone the…
- Why – Australia Post’s challenges and a ‘fork in the road’ decision: adapt and thrive or deny and decline
- What – The Post26 strategy
- How – Our AP Way Culture
The Our AP Way story is the programme’s foundation, enabling leaders to repeat the eleven ‘do or die’ messages and articulate ‘the why’ for all decisions made across the business.
Knowing people wanted a clear direction forward, we developed the Our AP Way GPS, a behavioural navigator, based on the three Post 26 strategic imperatives, allowing people to question if they’re working with or against the strategy.
In keeping with Australia Post’s purpose of ‘Delivering a Better Tomorrow’, we created a digitally enabled half-day engagement session introducing everyone to Our AP Way’s foundations.
The purpose was to create an understanding of how Australia Post’s customers are central to the strategy and how to use the Our AP Way GPS to bring the strategy to life.
We also designed and developed:
- A self-directed digital adventure, using 360 technologies,
to embed and reach a contracted workforce - Online versions of all sessions for employees in remote areas
of Australia, using a bespoke virtual classroom platform - A communications campaign, supporting the key messages, with tools to communicate Our AP Way at briefings and meetings
Our results
Our AP Way has rolled out throughout 2023. In just a little over the last 12 months…
- 32,425 team members experienced the half-day “Delivering A Better Tomorrow” engagement session, either in person or virtually on our Virtual Classroom platform
- This equates to 93.8% of team members directly employed by Australia Post who are now empowered and excited by the Our AP Way Story and Post 26 strategy, and understand how Our AP Way GPS will get them there!
- There were 725 active Leader Facilitators, who brought the sessions to life
- Team members who completed Our AP Way reported a significant increase of +7 points in their engagement
- Leaders who also completed the programme showed an increase of +3 points in their engagement
- Reflected in Australia Post’s 2023 Employee Opinion Survey, the programme positively influences the overall employee experience with a pronounced uplift on:
- Values (This organisation does the right thing by its employees)
- Community (I am proud of how Australia Post supports the community)
- Communication (I receive sufficient information about what is happening at Australia Post)
Qualitatively, feedback from team members who completed Our AP Way highlights their support of and commitment to the programme.
- An impressive 95.1% of team members agree or strongly agree that they are committed to bringing Our AP Way to life by using the GPS, evidencing dedication towards aligning their actions with the program’s principles.
- Strong collaboration and cohesion within the workforce are evident; 98% of team members express commitment to their role in leading Our AP Way and keeping their team and colleagues on track.
These measurable differences serve as a testament to the power and effectiveness of Our AP Way, positioning it as a vital tool across the organisation that enables individuals and teams to deliver a better future for Australia Post and its customers – now, and for the next 200 years.