Yves-André Jeandupeux
Head of Human Resources, Member of Executive Management
Do Swiss Post employees have to be available during their leisure time?
No. The principle at Swiss Post is: “Your leisure time belongs to you.” Outside working hours, we want our employees to be able to switch off and relax. In individual cases, however, it is possible that employees may have to be available or want to be available after work.
Who determines this availability?
The employee in consultation with their line manager. We also encourage our teams to discuss the issue of availability. For example: what do my employer and other team members expect?
Does this arrangement work?
Yes, our experience with the independent approach is positive, because it allows individual solutions. Allowance should be made for both professional and private needs.
Occupational safety
Fewer accidents thanks to shared experience
The number of accidents at Swiss Post is falling. To achieve this, the Group has invested systematically in occupational safety in recent years.
“Safety awareness has increased significantly,” notes Rolf Piana. He is Head of Maintenance at PostMail: his team deals with problems in the letter centers – usually under time pressure. Their daily work involves reaching into mechanical systems, climbing on scaffolding and moving between machines. If you’re not careful, you can quickly squash a finger, bump your head or sprain your ankle.
Accident risk down
To prevent these and worse accidents, Swiss Post maintains a safety organization with specialists and a so-called operating group solution – a management system for safety in the workplace. In 2016, this was successfully recertified by the Swiss Federal Coordination Commission for Occupational Safety (FCOS). And it is working: for each 100 employees, only just below six are now at risk of having an accident at work. In 2011, this figure was still above seven.
Rolf Piana and his team also have a role in implementing the requirements of the operating group solution. Some measures can be seen with the naked eye, such as the fixed working platforms between the machines, which are located where the maintenance crews used to have to climb ladders. Other measures are even simpler, but equally effective, says Piana: “We keep helmets directly in the places where they have to be worn.”
Learning from incidents
Many measures are now suggested by employees themselves, because they know best what can be optimized in their daily work. For the same reason, another key factor is raising people’s awareness of hazards in the first place. One example of this is the courses held by the units together with the Swiss National Accident Insurance Fund (Suva). And employees are also encouraged to learn from each other: all incidents are recorded in a Group-wide database and made available to other employees – even if the incident reported is only a near miss.