Operating as Australia Post and formerly the Australia Postal Commission, the Australia Postal Corporation is a government-owned corporation providing Australia Postal services. Australia Post’s head office has its location at 111 Bourke Street, Melbourne, serving as a post office as well. Australia Post possesses the exclusive right of collecting, carrying, and delivering letters within Australia with a maximum weight of two hundred and fifty grams. The letters monopoly, including the rights for issuing stamps for postage, is ‘reserved services’ for Australia Post (Crew & Kleindorfer 2012). The organization was offered the statutory monopoly in order to ensure that the Community Service Obligations (CSOs) are met using funding from the revenue earned from the reserved services. Australia Posts CSOs require for a letter service supply that is equitably and reasonably accessible to all Australian people, whether residing or carrying out business. Particularly, the letter service must be availed at a single standard letters uniform rate carried by ordinary post (Pitia, Singh & Naz, 2013). Australia Post offers various mail categories within the reserved services including ordinary letters, small letters, and the large letters category. Australia Post has recently implemented various reforms to improve its operational efficiency. Therefore, the paper seeks to analyze the Australia Post’s organizational change management.
Australia Post implemented several reforms. General consumers will be able to access the two-speed delivery timetable, which has been accessible to business consumers since June 2014. In addition, stamp prices have been flagged to increase to $1.50 for a priority stamp and $1 for a regular stamp (Crew, Kleindorfer & Campbell, 2009). Furthermore, the Australia Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will be tasked with the responsibility to oversee the prices of stamps, with Australia Post not having full control over the stamp rate (Campbell & Porges, 2008). Moreover, until September when the organization makes the biannual update of its product, there will be no implementation of changes.The time for delivery of mail will remain to be 5 days of the week, with the timetable for two-speed delivery becoming available to consumers while business customers’ delivery changes will not be indicated. As per the off-peak or update surface of March 2014, the regular delivery timetable will replace mail.
Pricing structure changes have been made so as to stem any loss for the service of letter delivery which cannot be offset by parcel delivery growth, according to Australia Post. The changes are in a place of a weekly two to three-day delivery, the loss of regional and metro post offices, privatization, or a government bailout of $6.8b (Jaag, Moyano, & Trinkner, 2016). In addition, business letter categories price changes have not been indicated, while in February 2014, updates of price were made, according to the normal practice of Australia Post. Furthermore, holders of concession cards will be in a position to purchase up to fifty stamps annually at a 60c concession rate, while during the holiday season the rates of Christmas cards will remain at 65c.
Australia Post has consulted with the industry for the development of a brand new postal category for pieces of promotional mail. The new category has geared specifically towards promotional messages, sales, and marketing, and will be offering greater discounts than the PreSort category. A large letter category was introduced during the 2014 September update aimed at enabling charity members in taking advantage of rates of charity mail for letters C5 and larger. Additionally, the discontinuation of pre-sort medium charity mail was implemented. Furthermore, charity mail pricing updates which used to run on their timetable was set to be updated bi-annually with the other categories of letters.
According to Brown & Osborne (2012) digital disruption has threatened legal business models throughout the economy. Tablets and smartphones have transformed the lives of people, with over twelve million Australian adults accessing a smartphone and consequently accessing various online services including internet banking and mailing services anywhere in the world (Chan, 2009). Therefore, compared to a decade or so ago, people do not mostly use the postal service. Since 2008, Australians have been sending one billion fewer letters each year. Further research by Crew & Kleindorfer (2012) indicates that compared to 1995, Australians have been sending an equal number of letters although the country’s population has grown by more than 6 million people from the time. Although there has been a decrease in the revenues, the letters cost base of Australia Post has remained fixed by performance standards which are onerously generated. Additionally, although there has been a volume decline in the rate of letters, regulations of the government have compelled Australia Post to provide a delivery service five days a week to ninety-eight percent of all mail addresses.
According to Hassall, Sluyter & Scott (2012) use of letters has declined at worrying rates of 8% annually, while the Boston Consulting group has forecasted an average annual decline of up to eleven percent. The decline in the letters business of Australia Post has threatened the viability of finances of the entire business, with the company announcing a 56% decline in its first-half profits while the loss of letters has doubled for more than one hundred and fifty million dollars (Dieke, Niederpruem & Campbell, 2008). Additionally, the second half’s loss in the previous financial year had been one hundred and six million dollars which recorded a corporate history as the first loss in any six month period for Australia Post. Therefore, without reform, there would be a strain in Australia Post’s viability and taxpayers will have to dig deeper into their pockets to subsidize the losses of the organization.
People Development Strategies Implemented by Australia Post to Overcome any Resistance to Change
People development strategies assist in overcoming change resistance, as employees are motivated and their morale boosted (Bass & Dalal-Clayton, 2012). The organization must be persuasive to employees after change implementation in order to retain skilled and experienced employees. The different strategies that overcome any change resistance in Australia post organization include Learning management program strategy, inspiration with vision, participation and involvement, education and communication, negotiations and rewards, and facilitation and support. Learning management programme strategy has been implemented by Australia Post organization to help the organization in administering, tracking and reporting on training programmes. The strategy has been linked with “future ready” milestone that is believed it will assist Australia post organization to invest significantly on growing opportunities in the digital economy (Nigel, 2014). Learning management programme strategy overcomes the resistance in the organization by providing digital services like employees-self services and digital suggestion platforms where employees can raise concerns anonymously in the areas they feel unsatisfied upon change implementation.
The organization also uses inspiring with vision strategy to overcome the change resistance. The inspiration paints a picture of post-change workplace clearly stating how people and the entire organization will benefit from the strategy (Turton, 2015). Furthermore, the organization has expanded its operation and invested in a community where people work and live and have recruited many people including 7829 employees speaking over 65 languages and 1674 employees with disabilities (Australia- post, 2018). Therefore, the majority of people are adaptable to domestic cultures and enjoys the benefits significantly due to low pricing of services and creation of employment opportunities hence they have low resistance to change. Additionally, the company has created a good customer loyalty and workforce relationship making easy for a manager to convince people to focus on organization vision as they design change.
Hoffman (2010) stated that “the best way of overcoming change resistance is by educating people about the efforts of change beforehand”. Educational and communication strategy has been used by Australia post organization for assisting and directing employees to see the logic process of change. Furthermore, the strategy minimizes poor communication or misinformation impact as it gives all stakeholders within the organization a chance of generating ideas to the system for better implementation and compression of change. Additionally, the strategy eliminates incorrectly and unfolded rumors about the change effects in the organization. For example, Australia Post Company uses effective communication between personal with improvement elements and agent of change for the good of the organization (Mullich, 2013).Furthermore, the communication strategy increasing deep understanding of organizational problems and increase awareness of declining in letter volume on Australia post organizations hence emphasizing the employees to adapt to change.
Participation strategy is also developed in the organization to design the change where the majority of employees have considerable power of resisting change. According to Boxall & Purcell, 2011) the involvement and participation of employees in change efforts will make them buy into change but no resist the change. The organization also have implemented the facilitation and support strategy whereby management is supportive of people during difficult times. Guest (2011) clearly pointed that “managerial support acts as a tool for assisting people to deal with anxiety and fear during the transition change period”. Therefore. The organization adheres to counseling’s, special training and time off work as a supportive measure for people to pick up with changes. Negotiations and Agreement strategy are implemented by the organization, as managers make sure employees are offered with incentives so that they cannot resist. The strategy is affirmed by the organization offering good compensation and benefits plan ( Allison & Kaye, 2011). Furthermore, the company explicit and implicit force to people and employees to accept change through threats and firm decisions that resistance to change might lead to transferring and not promoting employees, firing and losing jobs.
How Australia Post Has Aligned its Future Strategies to Manage Change and Innovation and to Lead in Global Business Environment
According to Doppelt (2017) if an organization does not align its future strategies it faces a challenge of change resistance as employees are not fully engaged. Furthermore, communication barriers maybe are experienced in all levels resulting in the slowness of future strategic executions. Australia post organization has aligned its future strategies with vision, mission, and strategic priorities. The future strategies are also aligned with the leadership team and the rest of the organization from the bottom up and the top down. Through the bottom up and top down alignments, the stakeholders in the organization are in a position of knowing how to contribute effectively to the organizational success and how the version of success is implemented to bring new creativity and innovation in the organization. The alignment with the leadership team has seen the Australia post collaborate with a subsidiary, joint ventures, individuals and small business in order to provide comprehensive services and products ranges in the market. The alignment provides a flexible leadership environment where departmental managers can persuade employees from different departments to see the changes as organization way of improvement.
Lessons Learnt After Analysing the Australia Post Case Study
From Australia Post case study, I have learned that strategies are a key determinant of the business success or failure in the market. If the business uses outdated strategies, which are not compatible with the modern world, then it is clear that it will not survive the competitive environment. Furthermore, the future planning and strategizing determine the growth of the business in the future. Business is a process and it changes with time just like in the case of Australia Post allowing training and development initiative for freeing up the employees from business to special innovations and projects. The reforms and new organisational structure can assist business to improve from its current situation.
Conclusion
The government should work closely with Australia Post in the development of important reform packages in not only ensuring that Australia Post’s letters business covers its costs, and also providing additional support financially to the organization as well as to ensuring that holders of concession cards continue accessing stamps at discounted prices.
References
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Australia post. (2018). Our people. Retrieved from https://auspost.com.au/about-us/corporate-responsibility/our-people
Bass, S., & Dalal-Clayton, B. (2012). Sustainable development strategies: a resource book. Routledge.
Boxall, P., & Purcell, J. (2011). Strategy and human resource management. Macmillan International Higher Education.
Brown, K., & Osborne, S. P. (2012). Managing change and innovation in public service organizations. Routledge.
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Hassall, K., Sluyter, P., & Scott, D. (2012). The Development of a Transport Meta-Language to Achieve Urban Freight Efficiencies: A Case Study of the Development and Application of the Australia Postal Corporation’s ‘Transport Information System’. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 39, 282-292.
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Pitia, N., Singh, G., & Naz, R. (2013). Postal Service Reforms in Solomon Islands of the South Pacific: Evaluating Consequences for Public Service Delivery and Customer Satisfaction. International Journal of Public Administration, 36(12), 821-830.
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