Royal Mail gives elearning PCs to employees

Royal Mail has extended an elearning initiative designed to improve the computer literacy of its workers. The organisation has issued a further 6,000 home PCs to staff.

Some 28,000 employees and their families benefit from the Learning for All scheme, which allows them to hire an internet-ready PC for £4.40 per week.

Elearning firm Futuremedia is supplying the PCs, which give access to online learning courses.

Wendy Powney, enterprise IT director at Royal Mail, told Computing the organisation is now looking at ways for employees to access the corporate intranet from their homes.

'In the next few years IT will need to play a more pivotal role in front-line communications and HR self-service,' said Powney. 'We hope employees will be able to enter expenses, change payment details and book time off using intranet functions.'

She says Royal Mail is investigating the feasibility of voice over IP telephony. The IT department manages 75,000 phones across the organisation.

'We have a slow, expensive infrastructure and are looking at how we can use internet technology to exploit it,' said Powney.

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