Royal Mail is turning itself into the UK’s laziest company

There are few modern irritations worse than returning home to discover a “sorry we missed you” delivery slip on the doormat. Standing in line at a collection point feels incongruous in a world where most day-to-day communications have switched to email, and hundreds of thousands of products can be delivered within hours of an order.

And the queue is presumably only going to get longer, now that Royal Mail has drastically cut its opening times to just two hours a day at around half of its customer service points. What exactly are its staff doing for the rest of the day? And how, precisely, is anyone whose employment involves showing up at an office, warehouse or factory supposed to collect their items? 

Royal Mail is leading us towards a do nothing economy – and until that changes we won’t get out of the current zero growth rut. Forget the 24/7 culture we were once meant to be steaming towards. Lockdowns put paid to that: even one Labour MP has claimed Royal Mail is using the Covid pandemic as an “excuse” to cut hours and force people online.
In Victorian London, you could post a letter in the morning and get a reply that afternoon. Technological innovations will always lead to creative destruction, with long-standing practices supplanted by new, better alternatives. But it still comes as a shock to learn that many Royal Mail collection points will be opening their doors from only 8-10am on weekdays. 

It is not as if this is a thriving business. After a series of strikes last year, Royal Mail racked up losses of more than £1 billion, and its shares have halved in value over the last five years. If its management would like an idea for turning things around, perhaps they could try opening collection points for more than ten hours a week? Getting the basics right would surely be more effective than rebranding themselves as International Distribution Services, which was the last big idea. In May, it was reported the company was delivering more than one in four first class letters late, in its worst performance on record.

Yet this latest development speaks to a wider malaise in the British economy. The assumption now is that we work from home, at least for a chunk of the week. And many do: recent analysis found more Brits work from home than in any other country bar Canada. In France, employees spend 0.6 days per week at home; here it is 1.5. For civil servants or HR professionals, a 9am stroll to the local collection point might be convenient. But we cannot cater only to WFH white-collar workers while backing everyone else into a position where they cannot juggle professional lives with personal admin. Many people – hairdressers, builders, lorry drivers – are unable to work from home.

Across many industries, Britain’s work ethic has been eroded by lockdowns. It was hardly fantastic to start with. We might have spent years mocking the French for their 35 hour week or long lunches, but even before the pandemic we only worked, on average, an additional 0.2 hours per week. The “free” money fantasyland created by our pandemic response has led to the illusion that work should fit around our lives. No nation can prosper under such pretences. 

We need a significant reset. Self-employment, flexible working, the gig economy – all have a place in our modern workforce. But the assumption should remain that Britain works from 9 to 5 from Monday to Friday. Services should fit around that norm. We would be richer, more productive, and probably happier as a result – even if we still couldn’t collect a parcel.