An Post, Ireland’s postal service enhance communications with their dispersed workforce

An Post is the state-owned provider of postal services in Ireland and is one of the country’s largest employers with over 11,000 employees. The organisation provides a universal postal service to all parts of the country. On a daily basis they handle more than 120,000 parcels and serve 250,000 businesses and 2.2 million delivery points.

The Challenge - Reaching a Primarily Remote Workforce

More than 60% of An Post’s workforce are “out on the road”. Reaching this workforce with consistent information and providing immediate updates was a challenge.

Based on previous employee satisfaction surveys, the company recognised that “lack of communication” was perceived as an issue and that it required some attention. 

At that time communication of key messages was via the management channel with the inherent risk of filtering and interpretation and therefore lack of consistency.

Printed newsletters were circulated, but often important news stories missed print deadlines. So an additional channel of communication was needed to deliver up-to-the-minute news to the entire workforce.

An Post researched the market and investigated intranet and extranet solutions. They also thought about giving email access to the entire workforce. 3,300 employees had access to email, but the rest of the workforce didn't.

A severe adverse weather event in 2018 accelerated the need to find a solution to the problem. The company needed to inform all staff of the nationwide ‘Orange Alert’ weather warning but had to rely on management to pass on this message.

A solution needed to be found so that employees could receive instant urgent messages and one that could be implemented quickly and easily.

Finding a Simple, Effective Solution

After consideration, An Post decided to invest in a mobile employee app for all of the workforce, especially those “hard to reach” employees.

It had to be something that would be fast to get information out to everyone at the same time. It also had to be exceptionally easy to download and use.

As Marian Joyce, Internal Communications Manager, put it “we needed something that was easy to access and use!”

An Post approached Thrive.App through a recommendation from an Thrive.App client, and a small joint project team was formed. After only a few short weeks the app was launched in April 2018.

The An Post app ‘Post People’ provides clear focus on news: whether that be group news, company news or departmental. It also focuses on recognition of individual employee achievements. Internal vacancies are published and announced with push notification alerts so that everybody has the chance to be informed. The CEO delivers messages straight to the entire workforce via video messages and news updates.

According to Marian, their “Post People” App has become “the number one channel of choice”.

Since the launch of ‘Post People’ in 2018, An Post have been updating their employee app with content, important safety updates, recognising employees for their hard wok and ensuring their workforce is connected, informed and empowered to carry out their roles effectively.

If your organisation is similar to An Post and you want to improve your internal communications, talk with a member of our team today to learn more about the Thrive employee app. We're working with many organisations across the UK, Ireland and beyond, to improve both daily operations and communications, as well as employee retention. Book a discovery call today.