Royal Mail will issue 180,000 staff with unique identities and email addresses as part of a self-service human resources system covering the entire organisation.

The replacement of its 18-year-old staff management platform is part of the group’s £1.2bn infrastructure revamp. It will streamline 16 separate HR daily processes such as reconciliation of timesheet data with salary information into a single SAP-based system.

“We need the right tools to manage our workforce,” said Royal Mail’s chief information officer Robin Dargue.

“Our current systems are not great. But they will be. A great deal of money and resources has been put into it.”

The new platform will also include an employee self-service system, and every employee will be provided with an email address and login details to operate the do-it-yourself facility.

“What would be easy in other companies can be quite tough in our case because of the overwhelming project scales. Tasks such as uniquely identifying all our staff for the system’s purposes will be quite challenging,” said Dargue.

“But I am very cautious about this project, because it drives payroll and we have a commitment to pay staff correctly and on time. So this will be a phased, tightly controlled implementation.”

The rollout of the staff management system will start in the next couple of months, with pilots in the business’ HR shared services centre, followed by the head offices and the letters division of the group.

Enhanced IT training is also prominent on the mail giant’s transformation plans. The company plans to increase awareness of its learning programme, Skills for Life, helping staff use the new technology it intends to implement, such as handheld devices to track information on letters and parcels.

“As we push automation further through the organisation, we will look closely at how we prepare our front-line staff to use new systems and tools aimed at improving customer service,” said Dargue.

“Innovation is not just about introducing new systems, but embedding change in the new ways of working. Re-skilling is a key part of the process.”