24 Apr 2008
Royal Mail has reskilled half its IT department and retooled its 10-year outsourcing deal with supplier CSC to get a stronger focus on software development.
Central to the postal service’s £1.2bn change agenda is the rollout of a Siemens-supplied automatic mail sorting system scheduled to go live at its mail centres and delivery offices in September.
The platform is the backbone of Royal Mail’s service overhaul, which will be followed by a number of customer-focused initiatives such as minute-by-minute parcel and letter-tracking, and projects aimed at internal optimisation, such as telemetry and scheduling of staff, trucks and aircraft.
To support the demand prompted by the service overhaul and the legacy systems yet to be replaced, chief information officer Robin Dargue launched a business capability review which shed almost half the 300-strong permanent IT workforce but created about 100 new core IT roles.
“The goal is transform to survive - it is that stark,” he said. “After establishing what we needed to do with technology, I asked myself whether we had the right mix of skills and capability to undertake this transformation.
“During the review, it emerged we needed roles we did not have because we had never done anything this large such as software architects, programme managers, security experts and business analysts.
“We identified some people to retrain and they are moving forward. Others perhaps were not up for it, so their career choices had to lie elsewhere. But if the core material is there, I will invest in the right talent.”
Royal Mail is five years into its 10-year outsourcing contract with CSC, which was reviewed late last year in relation to “monies Royal Mail wanted to pay for extra services and some services that were no longer required”.
Earlier this year, Computing revealed Royal Mail was tendering for up to £40m-worth of consultancy contracts to support its outsourcing deal with CSC. The move was triggered by “simpler consultancy framework agreements”, expected to reduce project timelines.
“We will see more activity around application development and CSC knows that,” said Dargue. “I like to have competition to ensure we have a range of great capability and partners. It is just sensible, and there is a lot to be done.”
I am very proud to have been a part of the IT team that helped to turn Parcelforce from a loss making company into a profit making one, and despite Mr Dargue throwing in this re-org curveball, Parcelforce this year turned out record profit...I have always done everything that's ever been put in front of me, and this was despite any training from RMG, I was amazed to find out that my department had failed to spend the training budget for the last 3 years?Funny how there was never any budget when HR were approached!
I wholeheartedly agree with the comments that have been left on this web site, "re-skilled", HA - my colleagues left barely know what they are leaning on from what they sit on with regard what is expected of them going forwards... As for transforming to survive, go and ask the Parcelforce stakeholders if they are getting value for money from the transformation! I am fairly certain that IT output (at Parcelforce) has been ZERO since December 2007; funny that is about the time that these shenanigans all started up? Call me bitter, but I reckon that the IT output will still be close to zero when it comes to the IT freeze in September?
Everyone is, or at least should be up for change, I think to a man everyone realised we could have done things better, but what this man and his "exceptional team" has done is up there with what our loveable PM has done with pensions!
Good luck to my colleagues who I leave behind, don't cry for me - I am already dead!
Posted by: Homer Jay Simson 03 Jun 2008
The cull was designed to remove people with travel status (LIW), and those with no fixed office. If you look at who was not successful, age and salary seem to have also played a large part. I understand that some people wanted 90% replaced or made surplus, and that lists of who were in and who were out were drawn up before people had even taken the assessment.
Posted by: Surplus RMG IT Keyworker 22 May 2008
As the union representing the employees of the Royal Mail IT function we are disappointed that Robin Dargue has gone to press at this stage of the re-organisation. Royal Mail has sailed very close to the wind during this restructuring and has only just stayed on the right side of the requirements of redundancy legislation.
Being critical of a workforce that, based on Dargue 's own assessment of the situation, have been starved of leadership, investment and skills development is easy to do and is consistent with highly paid recruits to companies. Come in, make changes and move on before anybody realises. Let's see how long it is before he moves on.
Unite members in IT at Royal Mail have been working hard to keep up with business requirements. They have been doing what was asked of them and often in difficult and uncertain circumstances. There has been a lack of investment but despite this the feedback from internal customers of Royal Mail has been consistently positive. It is clear that they are concerned about the loss of individuals who have been delivering their needs for some time and that there will be an impact on the service. Casting people adrift, as Royal Mail is, is simply not appropriate.
Unite is working hard to ensure that those of our members who want to stay in Royal Mail have every opportunity to do so and we will hold Dargue to his word that he will invest in the right talent.
Unite remains opposed to any form of compulsory redundancy and even a hint of this happening will create a backlash from the union.
Given the expense incurred in consultancies to undertake this work, the cost of voluntary redundancies and then the cost incurred in recruiting and paying new, fully equipped, employees a cost benefit analysis is likely to result in the situation where Royal Mail loses.
Brian Scott
Assistant national Secretary
Unite CMA
Posted by: Brian Scott, Assistant national secretary,Unite CMA 02 May 2008
Robin Dargue has reduced the Royal Mail Information Security team from 8 people to 2. This is a team that in several external independent reviews over the past few years was described as "excellent" and a few years ago won the coveted SC magazine "Best Security Team" award. The team had over 90 years of Information Secuirty experience gained in many different companies. The team also contained several people widely regarded as experts in their field and often invited to speak at conferences in the UK and abroad. So how much importance do you think Robin Dargue gives to Information Security? The evidence speaks for itself.
Posted by: Concerned Information Security Professional 26 Apr 2008
I regard the new CIO's comments as an insult. I worked for the Royal Mail Group for 23 years, 14 of which were in direct IT management. During that period I worked with some of the most inventive, original and talented people I have ever met within the world of IT. These included Programme and Project Managers, Technical and Software Architects and Business Analysts. The very people the current CIO says he doesn't have. They lived and breathed Post Office IT and between them there were hundreds (possibly thousands) of man-years of knowledge and understanding of cutting edge IT and how it could serve the Royal Mail Group. In lots of cases these people were at the leading edge (in some cases the bleeding edge) of technology. They managed and successfully delivered some of the most ambitious projects of their day.
What happened to them? In 2002/3 the Royal Mail Group was haemorrhaging money and making vast losses. To try to get some extra income it outsourced its IT functions and talented staff to CSC. Shortly after that CSC transferred the best of them away from the PO contract and spread them across their portfolio of contracts and who could blame them? The Royal Mail's loss was CSC's gain.
Given the CIO's comments I think I'm starting to hear the sound of chickens coming home to roost.
Posted by: Steve Wilson 25 Apr 2008
on the dozens of IS professionals thrown out after an assessment which, even the assessors agreed, could not be used to identify technical skills. A number of people who Mr Dargue claims 'weren't up for it' are ISEB and ITIL accredited with many years IS and Royal Mail experience and have been discarded because he didn't like the way things were done. Interestingly, some of the new jobs have remarkably similar job descriptions to the old jobs but are now being advertised with six figure salaries.
Posted by: A concerned employee 24 Apr 2008
The Royal Mail hasn't 'reskilled' anybody. what it did was to 'cull' over half the IS workforce after a one-day assesment which did not take regard of length of service, job knowledge, technical skills or any part of a CV. Interestingly, the proposed replacements will be selected via their CVs, a luxury the staff thrown out weren't allowed. Nobody in the new organisation has been retrained so far and a number of people have been given jobs unsuitable to their technical skills. Others, after receiving a job offer, have decided not to accept and are leaving the business.
Posted by: An ex Royalmail employee 24 Apr 2008
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