Corporate responsibility

In 2008, we began a new three year corporate charity partnership with Barnardo’s, and we actively encourage colleagues to get involved in fundraising for this charity as well as those which people personally support.

Colleagues have the opportunity to get involved in volunteering at the Post Office® – from small local projects to national organised events.
It could be anything from decorating a local playschool, creating a sensory garden, taking children on a day trip, or organising a school leavers interview tips day.

With such a large network, including a fleet of supply chain drivers, we understand our impact on the environment and the significance of climate change. That’s why we are playing our part in fully supporting challenging targets to achieve by 2010. These are to:

• reduce our transport related greenhouse gas emissions by 20% 
• reduce our greenhouse gas emissions from building energy use by 10% 
• reduce the quantity of containerised sold waste we send to landfill by 25% 
• reduce our fresh water use by 5%

Working towards these targets now will stand us in good stead for the future, developing our reputation as a sustainable, ethical business, saving us money and reducing our overall impact on the environment.

The Post Office® is at the heart of the community, and we recognise the importance of diversity for our customers, subpostmasters and colleagues:

For customers: we serve 24 million customers every week – understanding their diversity and their diverse needs will help us to deliver excellent customer service.

For subpostmasters: our subpostmasters represent a huge range of different backgrounds, so it’s important we understand their needs so that we can build strong and inclusive relationships that respect different cultures, languages and views.

For colleagues: our customers and subpostmasters represent different backgrounds, so creating workplace where everyone feels valued and respected as individuals is important.

We take an active interest in personal wellbeing of all our colleagues and promote healthy living through discounted gym membership and proactive health initiatives. We also offer an Online Check-In which is a free, online health advice website which gives all colleagues – and their families – access to unique health and wellbeing advice.

Each quarter, we are asking a random sample of colleagues from across Post Office to participate in our engagement survey. We also run regular Ideas Exchanges which give our colleagues an opportunity to provide feedback and ideas, and share best practice. This is a valuable way of making sure that we have a work environment which feels fairer, easier and better.

We make healthy and safe working a way of life. Pursuing this aim reflects the high value we place on our employees and all those touched by our business activities. To achieve this, we do a number of activities including ensuring that the health and safety responsibilities of all our colleagues are clearly defined and understood, and all collegaues carry out their responsibilities, through effective health and safety management systems, with safe premises, equipment and processes.