Who benefits from an increased trend towards higher productivity within La Poste?

Who benefits from an increased trend towards
     higher productivity within La Poste?

                      Emmanuel de la Burgade1, Elen Riot2

                      1
                          ESC Rennes, 2Reims Management School
     Since 1990, La Poste, the French postal and banking services company
     has undergone a lot of changes. The aim of the company was to improve
     its profitability and reliability to face competition. Productivity gains be-
     came one of the main objectives. This paper tries to identify how stake-
     holders – employees, managers, customers and shareholder – benefit
     from those changes.

1.       Introduction

Since 1990, La Poste, the French postal and banking services company has under-
gone a lot of changes. The aim for of company was to improve its profitability and
reliability to face competition. The monopoly that was given to La Poste has been
steadily reduced since the European Commission Directive on Services (1997), and
its market was fully open to competition on January 1st, 2011. Meanwhile, their tradi-
tional activity – the mail activity – faced a huge downturn, and very pessimistic per-
spectives are given for the future.
The wave of changes and reforms increased at the beginning of the 21st century
when the threat of competition became more vivid with the gradual opening of their
market to competition. In 2003, alarmist reports have been published by public au-
thorities (Larcher, 2003; Cour des comptes, 2003) to stress the weaknesses of the
company: an increased exposition to competition, a low quality of services compared
to other European postal operators and an unsuitable structure. The company “must
reorganize itself if it doesn’t want to die” (Larcher, 2003, p.16). Following those public
reports, the strategy defined by the company with its shareholder – the State – in two
successive planning contracts (2003-2007: “Performances et convergences”; 2007-
2012: “Performances et confiance”) was clearly to optimize the structure, to industri-
alize the mail activity and to find new growth opportunities. Those two planning con-
tracts were based on the hypothesis that the decline of mail activity would be com-
pensated by productivity gains and growth opportunities.
However, even if the original factor which urged the company to improve its activity
was the full opening of its market to competition, the main stake that the company
has to face today is more a significant decline of mail activity: public reports (Ailleret,
2008; Cour des comptes, 2010) give very pessimistic forecasts, such as a maximum
decrease of 40% of mail volumes up to 2015. Economic crisis, more performing tools
on Internet, dematerialisation processes from large companies and public institutions,
search for sustainable development are some of the main reasons why this trend is

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becoming more marked. No new competitor entered the French mail market in 2011,
which demonstrates how unattractive this market is today.
Those external factors – competition and decline of mail activity – stressed the com-
pany to be more and more productive. The search for productivity can therefore be
read in most of the main reforms the company undertook. Even if the wave of chang-
es started in 1990, we will focus in this paper on those that happened after 2003 so
as to show how the company tries to improve its productivity. Those changes as ex-
plained by La Burgade and Roblain (2006) are of different nature: technology, indus-
trial processes and work organisation; commercial; and managerial. Even if the no-
tion of productivity would normally more easily refer to improved industrial processes,
we should not neglect the commercial and managerial changes as they are interre-
lated one to each other.
If the activities of La Poste have been reorganised and the structure been readapted
to meet an objective of increased productivity, the whole bunch of changes had an
impact on many stakeholders: employees, managers, customers, shareholders but
also society. Do they all benefit from the changes? Those reorganisation processes
are changing the environment of the employees and it has indeed an impact on their
relationship with both their managers and their customers. The State, as a share-
holder, might also be concerned as an improved productivity may imply a better prof-
itability. Society might also be impacted as reorganisation processes may put aside,
or not, the public service obligations that the company hold, officially and unofficially.
Do they all benefit from this increased trend towards higher productivity?
To answer this question, we mobilize a continuous research work undergone within
La Poste, and especially a research contract realized in 2010. This later research
was an action research on the management in local units and their leeway. 22 semi-
directives interviews have been completed with local managers, their deputy manag-
ers, mailmen and other employees. The aim of this research was to look for good
practices of innovation management within their restricted environment. This re-
search was also a pretext to look at the evolution of the company and the importance
of the productivity measures in their day-to-day tasks. Even if the initial research was
more of an action research achieved under a constructivist paradigm, the results pro-
vided in this paper are coming from the ethnographic part of it, trying to understand
the behaviours of and the benefits for each stakeholder.
In a first part, we explain the different reforms and changes undergone within La
Poste since 2003 so as to epitomize how the company is desperately searching for
productivity gains. In a second part, we show how those gains are shared, or not,
within the different stakeholders of the firm: even if some processes can be industrial-
ized to improve the productivity, the company mustn’t forget that services are hetero-
geneous.

2.       How is La Poste looking for productivity gains?

La Poste is a very large company with approximately 260,000 employees and covers
a large number of activities from its traditional mail activity to the latest one, which is
Mobile virtual network operator. It would be too tedious to explain extensively how its

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activities are concerned by productivity gains and we decided to focus only on the
main lines of the reforms and changes. We will first explain how the company decid-
ed to split its activities in four branches and to professionalize those activities so as to
make them more profitable and more customer oriented. We will then detail how the
retail outlets branch and the mail branch evolved over the last eight years so as to
improve their productivity.

2.1.     Professionalization of its activities
In 1996, La Poste decided to divide itself into four activities: mail, parcels, financial
services and retail outlet network. The aim of the executives was to professionalize
each activity and to enhance their commercial appetence. The evolution was pre-
sented as a way to get closer to the customer and to better meet their expectations.
However, the initial split was only made in the head office of the company and not on
the ground. For instance, some post offices were still in charge of both sales and the
processing of mail. The total split of the activities was realized through two succes-
sive reforms called “Nouvelles Déconcentration Opérationnelle” (NDO) in 2001 and
“Responsabilisation Du Management” (RDM) in 2003. Those two reforms aimed at
splitting definitively three different activities of the group.
Before 2003, the territorial hierarchy of La Poste was supervising all four activities.
After RDM, new territorial hierarchies were separately sketched for mail, parcels and
retail outlets and activities. This process also included a decentralization and soft
downsizing (from 5 to 3 hierarchical levels). Local managers were theoretically given
more decision-making power to almost autonomously manage their business: they
manage their human resources and their unit as a performing unit with, in theory,
clearly set objectives and negotiable means to attain those objectives. The aim is to
improve and professionalize sales activities. The split of those activities was justified
by the fact that the processes were not the same for each activity and that the opti-
mization of their processes would be more efficient if the businesses were autono-
mous.
In 2003, the separation of the industrial processes of the parcel branch and the mail
activity was enhanced when the parcel branch created its own processing, sorting
and distribution centres in urban areas. However, the distribution of parcels in rural
areas was left to the original letter carrier of the mail branch. A question of cost and
economies of scale…
In 2006, with the creation of La Banque Postale as an autonomous subsidiary of La
Poste, the banking activity has been more clearly separated from the retail outlet ac-
tivity with which it was associated before. A fourth territorial hierarchy was then cre-
ated to supervise the activity locally, with its own support and commercial expertise
functions. However, the 11,000 bank financial advisors remained hierarchically at-
tached to 4,500 post offices and their managers (retail outlet branch), even if they
work exclusively for La Banque Postale.
With those reforms, the retail outlet branch became a service provider to the three
other activities, as they all need a post office to sell their products and services to
private individuals. As for professional customers, each branch developed its own
sales network and improved their range of products and services.

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Many commercial changes are already notably stressed by La Burgade (2006; 2009),
Salaün (2008) and Delahaye (2009). Main factors of change are the professionaliza-
tion of the sales workforce, the intensive use of internal and external marketing, new
services and products, the segmentation of customers with a more differentiated of-
fer. The group La Poste insists on the customer oriented objective they pass on to all
four activities. This customer-oriented policy is characterised by a mass customiza-
tion process to achieve a better performance with a higher level of standardisation for
each category of customers. Mass customization is often more understood as a ra-
tionalization process (Benghozi, 1998; La Burgade, 2006) than a customized way to
meet the customers’ satisfaction. What can be stressed from this professionalization
underlined by commercial changes and the customer-oriented policy is that the com-
pany tries to increase its sales (or to maintain its sales). The aim is both to be more
profitable and to be more productive with more sales, especially as the products and
services may be standardized for each segment of customers.
Even if the four activities are separated, the group La Poste decided to create a cen-
tralized call centre (with one phone number: 3631) to collect and deal with claims
from their customers. This call centre was created both to relieve local units from this
burden and to professionalize answers from the company. It was a way to homoge-
nise and guarantee a certain level of quality. The phenomenon is interesting as it is
again a way to specialize the workforce so as to make each activity more efficient,
and certainly, more productive.
The professionalization of the activities we stressed shows indirectly how La Poste is
trying to make its machine more productive. We may now look more in detail to the
direct ways that would make it more productive, in its retail outlets and mail activities.

2.2.     The huge reorganisation of the retail outlet branch
The retail outlet branch is at the crossroad of conflicting objectives. Politician would
like to keep post offices in their municipalities and, at the same time, the other
branches of La Poste complain about the cost of the network. The main challenge of
the retail outlet branch is to reduce its costs and at the same time meet the citizens’
needs. Since 2000, the retail outlets branch is therefore facing a huge reorganisation
of its network: some post offices closed; the network and the management are reor-
ganised (“RDM” and “Terrain”); configurations of post office are radically changed
(“Espace service conseil”); the sale process is more and more normalized; and finally
IT and performance measurement are gathering momentum within the firm. All those
features of reorganisation tend to a more productive or less costly retail outlet net-
work.
The first emblematic illustration of this reorganisation is the reduction of the number
of post offices that went from 14,147 in 1999 down to 13,722 in 2004 and down to
10,574 in 2009. As to keep its network of approximately 17,000 retail outlets, La
Poste is gradually replacing its post offices by community postal agency (2,933 in
1999 and 4,619 in 2009) and more recently by “relais poste” outlets (1,826 in 2009).
Community postal agencies are clearly a way for municipalities to maintain their post
office as they accept to share the costs with La Poste. “Relais poste” outlets are run
by shopkeepers and small trades people and are presented as a way for La Poste “to
ensure that postal services are provided at times and locations that suit local cus-
tomers’ needs” (La Poste annual report, 2005, p.11). It is also a less expensive way

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for La Poste to keep its network of 17,000 outlets. Of course, not all products and
services of La Poste are sold in community postal agencies and “relais poste” outlets.
What can be noticed is that La Poste measured that 6,298 outlets in partnership
(community postal agencies and “relais poste”) had less than 1h activity, and that
they kept 1,122 post offices with less than one hour activity. This reduction of post
offices clearly shows the intention to reduce the cost of the network and therefore
mechanically increase its productivity.
The second illustrations of the reorganisation are the two reforms “RDM” and “Ter-
rain”. We already mentioned that “RDM” participated to the downsizing of the com-
pany. We haven’t mentioned that territorial levels, in between national and local lev-
els, were drastically reduced: 100 departmental directions have been reduced to 48
with pretty much less prerogatives, resources and personnel. They were not anymore
managing parcel and mail activities in their territories. It was the same for the
“groupement”, in between the post office and the departmental direction: their num-
ber has been reduced and they are not any more managing support activities such
as human resources and logistics. Their only objective is now to manage the com-
mercial activities. Another consequence of RDM is that, even if local managers are
supposed to have more responsibilities, territorial and local resources have been
drastically reduced and give little, if no, leeway to manage the units.
This reduction of territorial directions and their workforce has been followed in 2005
by a new reform called “Terrain”. The objective of this project is to completely rede-
sign the network with a geomarketing division into “life zones”. A life zone defines a
perimeter where all products and services of La Poste must be delivered through one
or more outlets, be they post offices or other outlets. This life zone is then managed
by one post office manager (“Directeur d’Etablissement Terrain”) who is supervising
all the outlets in the life zone. Figures in 2008 show that approximately 13,000 post
offices in 2005 have been replaced by 4,580 “Terrains” or life zones in 2008, which
means less post offices, less managers, but also less employees. A new manager
could then supervise up to 6 or 7 post offices and other outlets. Considered as a way
to reconfigure the territorial organisation and to reduce costs, this project was de-
signed in terms of productivity of the workforce. Managers are asked to better man-
age their workforce allocation to improve the profitability of the network: the underly-
ing objective is to reduce the front-office clerks dedicated to mail and parcel activities
and to increase those to financial services (Delahaye, 2009). This reform also includ-
ed the mutualisation of the reserve of employees that was historically affected to post
offices directly.
The project “Terrain” was conjointly implemented with another one, called “Cap Rela-
tion Clients”, whose objective was to promote a new commercial organisation. The
range of products and services was indeed increased (especially with non postal
products) and displayed in “life zones” so as to try to make the network more profita-
ble.
The third illustration is the reconfiguration of the interior of the post office. Leduc
(2003) already extensively mentioned how post offices have been reconfigured over
the years. However, his study is too old to consider the latest policy the company
started to deploy in 2009, which is called “Espace service clients” (ESC). The post
office is not any more organised with counters separating the workforce from the cus-
tomer. It is now organized as a shop where the front office clerk is theoretically sup-
posed to move and help the customer chose the service or product they are looking

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for in the shop. With ESC, the emphasis is obviously put on automatons when no
relational value added and simple services are requested by customers. It follows the
recommendations of Ailleret (2008). Even if automation is not new within La Poste1,
Ailleret (2008) pointed out that the number of automatons was not sufficient and that
6,000 new automatons (3,000 cash withdrawal machines and 3,000 mail services
machines) would be necessary to automate 85% of the activities with no relational
value added activity. New ESC configured post offices are therefore including more
automatons and the front office clerks orient customers to those automatons. A post
office manager testified that her objective was to divide by two the operations made
at the counter and that could be automated.
The aim of ESC and the automation of simple services is to develop more value add-
ed activities and a better counsel to customers. Activities such as financial advice,
services to professional, mobile phone sales are clearly preferred to the sale of
stamps! Financial activities are even considered as the future of post office and
should represent 80% of their activity in the future. The main effect of this new con-
figuration is that post office managers are given less human resources and more au-
tomatons: it is clearly an objective to increase the productivity of the office through
automation and more value added services sold by clerks.
The fourth illustration is the normalization of the sale process. Leduc (2003) and La
Burgade (2006) already stressed the normalization implied by the behavioural script
BRASMA (Bonjour – Regard – Attention – Sourire – Merci – Au revoir: Hello – look –
attention – smile – thank – good bye) so as to improve theoretically the quality of the
service. Jeantet (2006) and Delahaye (2009) also mentioned the adoption of sales
techniques or reformulation script to make the clercks improve their sales (respec-
tively ATP and OQVQ). The aim is clearly to professionalise the front office clerks so
as to increase the satisfaction of customer and so as to better meet their needs. The
employee may be more and more considered as a machine in a production process
who should implement a script whenever a new client comes to his counter. The lat-
est script in use today is to ask the customer no to buy his stamps at the counter but
on the automaton or on Internet. All clerks must indeed ask the customer to make no
value added operations on automatons or on Internet. Post offices are evaluated on
their sales with automatons and their sales on Internet (sales on Internet are tracked
and attributed to post offices)!
The fifth and last illustration that needed to be mentioned is the increased power of IT
and performance measurement within La Poste. Many software applications have
been developed within the company to configure the network and allocate resources.
Geomarketing software applications are used to configure the network and the life
zones. Other software applications are used to configure the opening hours, to
measure the inventory (and to make automatic resupply), to measure the activity of
customers. All the activities of the post office are measured through different infor-
mation system. One of the most famous is the “statistique 539” which gives standard
times for each activities performed within the post office. All those software applica-
tions participate to the final allocation of resources that is given to post offices.

1
    First configurations of fully automated offices were experimented in 1964 and 1969 but were never
    really spread out within the network. However automatons were implemented in many urban post of-
    fices.

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Even if the objectives of managers, set in the contract called “Contrat d’action et de
progrès”, are supposed to be negotiated, most of them are not. Managers are as-
sessed on commercial, management, productivity and quality objectives and all of
them are permanently measured. Most of the objectives that are set to them are de-
cided thanks to performance indicators that tell how much resources should be allo-
cated to a post office depending on its sales. And the main resource that managers
are usually struggling for is the workforce.
What perhaps need to be stressed again is that the retail outlet branch is a service
provider to the other activities who must bear its cost. If this network is too expensive
and no productivity gains are made, the other branches might decide not to keep this
branch as a service provider. La Banque Postale is regularly complaining about the
cost of the network. The mail activity decided to create its own services that may
avoid the use of the retail outlet network, for instance, the delivery of parcels through
lockers (“Cytissimo”) or at the delivery centre (instead of the post office).
Even if La Poste invested a lot in automatons, most of the costs of the retail outlets
are the wages of the clerks. It is certainly why most of the policies detailed in this pa-
per are encouraging a reduced number of employees. It is clearly what all managers
are trying to do to meet their objectives.

2.3.     The in-depth restructuration of the mail branch
The number of employees is also a great concern for mail delivery and sorting cen-
tres’ managers. The main motto today is the automation of the sorting process that is
usually called “mechanization” inside La Poste. Combined with the decline in mail
volumes, mechanization is at the heart of all the main changes that will be men-
tioned: “Facteur d’avenir” to reorganize the rounds and the activities of the letter car-
riers; “Cap Qualité Courrier” to improve the organisation of the sorting process; and
IT system to forecast flows and to reorganize rounds. Only our last item is not con-
cerned by automation as it deals with the activity of letter carriers in rural areas, to
which other activities are locally institutionalized.
The first reform that needs to be mentioned is “Facteur d’avenir”, which can be literal-
ly translated in English as “letter carrier for the future”. The main objective of this pro-
gram, implemented as from 2007, is to encourage the flexibility of the rounds and of
the workforce. The aim is both to be able to adapt the delivery process to daily vol-
umes and to have all rounds covered every day by a letter carrier. For instance,
rounds are now mutualised in teams of approximately 8 letter carriers. One of them
who is kind of manager of the team has a round that may be divided among the oth-
ers when there is a shortage of letter carriers or when the volume is considered to be
low (days of the week are classified as weak or strong). It is the way letter carriers
presented this reform to us. The way it is presentation by the institution is that 7 letter
carriers have their own round, and that when there is a high volume of letters to de-
liver, a 8th round is created and taken in charge by a team leader letter carrier. This
project is often presented as way to create more collective and collaborative work
team within the letter carriers. It also creates three level of letter carriers (regular,
team leader, quality manager) and therefore offers potential promotion to them. This
new system is enhanced by the other program, “Cap Qualité Courrier”, which is in-
creasing, for the letter carriers, their time spent to delivery process and reducing their
time spent to sorting process. As those two projects are both implemented more or

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less at the same time, they both have a huge influence on the reorganisation of
round and on the reduction of rounds.
The second reform “Cap Qualité Courrier” (CQC), implemented in 2005, is a huge
modernization project that is kind of a challenge: the aim is to reorganise the collec-
tion, sorting and delivery processes where 220,000 points of collection have to be
linked with 30 millions points delivery. This project is based on three axes: a new in-
dustrial architecture with 3 levels; a new logistics system to improve the efficiency of
transportation; a modernisation of all equipments (new sorting machines, new IS,
new sorting sets of compartments). The aim is clearly to improve productivity through
a new industrial process.
The first axis is very emblematic. Historically, the mail industrial process was de-
signed based on the French administrative districts. 100 administrative districts
meant 100 sorting centres. With CQC, the objective is to have only 46 sorting cen-
tres. The objective is also to reduce the number of delivery centres with newly creat-
ed “Plate-forme de Distribution Courrier” (PDC) and “Plate-forme de Préparation et
de Distibution Courrier” (PPDC). Both are collection and delivery centres, but the se-
cond one can also be used to do preparatory work for sorting centres. The implemen-
tation of CQC is in line with previous reorganisation process that tried to concentrate
the delivery process in rural areas and to fully separate the sorting process (and fully
mechanize it) and the delivery process in urban areas2: the objective is to industrial-
ize the mail process by rethinking the geographical repartition of centres and the
transportation modes so as to reduce costs.
As Ailleret (2008) summarizes CQC, the main lines of the projects are to concentrate
the mail industrial processes on a more limited number of centres and to automate
this industrial process with new sorting machines. Economies of scale may therefore
be increased both through the “mechanization” of the sorting process and the “mas-
sification” of the flows (more letters in a more efficient sorting machine). La Poste
therefore invested millions of Euros in new sorting machines that are now working in
sorting centres and delivery centres (PPDC only).
Those investments enabled also to improve the sorting process. Four levels of sort-
ing exist: “TG1” by department; “TG2” by distribution; “TG3” by round; “TG4” sorting
the letters in the order of the streets of the round. New sorting machines and new
sets of compartments (called “Casiers Hybrides Modulaires”) were able to improve
TG3 and TG4, reducing the time a letter carrier usually spends for sorting activities
when he arrives at 6 o’clock in the delivery centres. The main result is that letter car-
riers have more time for the delivery of letters and their round are therefore rede-
signed and lengthened. It means fewer rounds and fewer employees, therefore a
higher productivity, ceteris paribus3. Future sorting machines, which are actually test-
ed by the company, will improve the industrial process by providing exact daily vol-
ume forecasts to delivery centres about the load of their centre: it will certainly lead to
a more flexible management of the workforce.

2
  Those two programs were « Réseau de la Production et de la Distribution du Courrier » launched in
  1996 and « Déconcentration de la Distribution Urbaine » launched in 2004.
3
  Rounds may be lengthened also due to the decline of letter volumes.

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The modernization of the equipment also means that new centres are better ergo-
nomically designed, and new information system enables a permanent running, a
better national supervision and tracking. If CQC is mainly presented as a way to in-
crease productivity, it can also presented as an improved service to customers,
guaranteeing the reliability, regularity and safety of sendings, and developing new
value added services such as permanent tracking of sendings.
The third change relates to IT systems and the performance measures that have
been developed in the mail branch. Information systems are used to design the
round, based on the point of delivery, their location and the distance. They are also
used to measure the activity (and the performance) of the letter carriers and of the
delivery centre. Samzun (2007) explains that the duty of the letter carrier is pre-
scribed, watched and normalized. This information system gradually replaced the
“organizers” who were in charge of “weighting” rounds and redesigning them. Today,
letter carriers who hold the function of quality manager have to use the information
system to look at the rounds of their delivery centre.
The last change is the will of the executives to increases the “profitability” or to re-
duce the cost of letter carriers in rural areas. Although letter carriers in rural areas are
still in charge of parcels and unaddressed advertising mails (contrary to letter carriers
in urban areas who are only in charge of addressed letters), other activities may be
given to them thanks to local partnerships. La Poste is locally formalizing by con-
tracts many services such as the delivery of medicine, the reading of electricity or
gas meters, etc. Those activities are perhaps more a way to stress the participation
of La Poste to public services rather than to (desperately) improve its profitability and
reduce its costs in rural areas. Some of those services were already offered inde-
pendently by letter carriers who were receiving tips for their “private” help.
Finally, except for the last change we mentioned, all changes stress the aim at in-
creasing productivity by a reduction of the workforce and the automation and optimi-
zation of the industrial processes. Again, managers are given objectives through a
“Contrat d’action et de progrès” which includes objectives in terms of workforce and
quality of service.
As the main mean of productivity seems to be the reduction of the workforce, we may
question how employees perceive those changes. Does it have an impact on the
other stakeholders who are in relation with them, such as managers and customers?
How is the performance of the global company impacted? Are shareholder better
served?

3.       Who benefits from the implied increased productivity
         of the reorganisation processes?

All the reforms and changes we presented show that the company wants to modern-
ise its activities and processes. The effect should certainly be: for employees better
conditions of work thanks to a better equipment and a better rationalized organisation
of work; for managers better processes which should help manage more efficiently
employees and the organisation; for customers a higher quality of service through
increased reliability, regularity, safety and new value added products and services;

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for the company and the shareholder a better allocation of resources, increased mar-
gins and profits (which means higher dividends for shareholders), and potentially a
higher leeway to organise social cohesion at work. Would such a presentation be
utopian?
To answer this question, we may look at how employees, managers, customers, the
organisation and the shareholder benefit from those new processes that imply a
higher productivity.
Our results have been triangulated and supplemented with other research works un-
dergone on the letter carriers (Berthelot, 2006; Salaün, 2008; Samzun, 2007) and
counter clerks (Hanique, 2004; Delahaye, 2009). It is indeed sometimes difficult to
tone done the lack of objectivity interviewees may have.

3.1.     Employees: dissatisfaction seems to overshadow true bene-
         fits.
The main changes that the company implemented had both positive and negative
effects on the work of employees, be they letter carriers or counter clerks. Based on
observation and interviews, results show that employees have to face a greater in-
stability and hardness at work, an increased individualisation of their work and a rela-
tive loss of meaning in their work. It is not always balanced by the benefits of the
normalizations and modernisation of their conditions of work. Does it have any im-
pact on the quality of the service?
The first feature is the instability at work. Reasons are numerous and depend on the
evolutions and the way the employees perceive those changes. The first illustration
of instability are for letter carriers and counter clerks the fact that they perceive the
decline of their activities: they are able to tell that there are less letters to distribute,
that less customers come to the post office. They know that their position may be at
stake in the future. It is certainly why most of them do not strike anymore and/or do
adhere to unions, as they adopt a fatalist approach to the reduced number of em-
ployees: La Poste employed approximately 300,000 persons in 2000 and 260,000 in
2010. This feeling of instability in reinforced by the fact that reorganisation processes
are conducted every year or every two years: one manager even explained that it
has been admitted by her hierarchy that an organisation should be reconfigured eve-
ry 18 months to adapt continuously to the evolution of the activity. Instability comes
both from the frequency of those reorganisations and from their consequences: the
main translation of a reorganisation is a reduced number of employees.
For the letter carriers, the instability can be explained through the reorganisation of
their rounds. Historically, rounds were attributed almost for life to letter carriers and
they were weighted approximately every two years (some streets may be added or
removed). A radical change of a round was almost never occurring. When a letter
carrier wanted to change rounds, auctions were taking place between letter carriers
to reallocate the rounds. New sorting processes and the project “Facteur d’avenir”
implicated such a reorganisation that many rounds needed to be radically changed.
Some rounds became divisible and their letter carrier had to be attributed a new
round, if any was available, at the next auction. Some letter carriers complained
about the process, mainly those who lost their rounds. Instability is therefore ex-
pressed by the fact that letter carriers are not guaranteed anymore that they will keep

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their round for ever. Some letter carriers even believe that in the future no auction
would be again organised and that rounds may not be attributed for life any more.
Counter clerks also feel that their work becomes instable. Even if, historically, they
had to meet procedures and followed a kind of administrative work, they are now
asked to sell. They understand that reorganisation processes tend to reduce the
number of clerks in a post office and that their work content is changing: they are
asked to be more polyvalent (more commercial, more financial services oriented).
They also understand that when they orient customers to automatons, they are dig-
ging their own grave. Of course, not all clerks feel this instability, and some under-
stands that they have to be more commercial and provide more value added services
to customers.
This lack of stability and the increased polyvalence that is asked to those employees
may create a loss of relation to their work as expressed by Berthelot (2006). Howev-
er, this loss of relation to their work may be more meaningful to counter clerks than to
letter carriers, as the former are required more polyvalence than before and may
have more difficulties than the later to forecast their daily activities. This is especially
true for the new configuration of work (ESC), where employees cannot freely decide
about their breaks as it now depends on the affluence in the post office.
The second feature is the increased hardness at work. Both letter carriers and coun-
ter clerks may complain today about it. CQC and “Facteur d’avenir” had both a con-
sequence on the size of the round of the letter carriers: this size was increased as
less sorting activities were required from them and as less letters had to be delivered.
Of course, many letter carriers complain about the increased time they have to spend
outside the delivery centre on their round, and about the bigger weight of letters they
have to carry. However, some of them are relieved that the sorting process has been
reduced. What they may certainly contest is that the company developed tools to bet-
ter configure and weight their round and more frequently reorganise the rounds to
take into account the evolution of the mail activity. Hardness at work may sometimes
be felt as an excuse to criticize the change, but the lack of objectivity may sometimes
come from both sides, as it is sometimes true that the information systems developed
by the company are not always considering all the difficulties of a round. Samzun
(2007) clearly explains that if parcel carriers were following all the procedures (al-
ways park the car in a secure location, close all doors, ring the bell and wait enough
time for the customer to come, make the customer sign correctly the delivery receipt),
they would make overtime. Another problem is pointed out by Salaün (2008): this
new organisation is very hard for letter carriers when their sorting machine is out of
order and cannot prepare and make the TG3 or TG4 sorting: the size of their round is
so large that they cannot afford anymore sorting manually. Samzun (2007) and
Salaün (2008) also point out that when letter carriers are not manually sorting any-
more, they loose a leverage of quality control as they are not able to visualize their
round through the sorting process and be familiarized with their delivery process.
Hardness at work is also an argument from the counter clerks who are experiencing
the new configuration of post office. As there are no more counters, clerks are asked
to stand up inside the office more or less all day. We already mentioned that breaks
are not as easily taken as before. Many clerks complain that their back or their legs
hurt.

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The third feature is that an individualisation of work is strengthened by this new or-
ganisation. Of course, letter carriers have always managed their own round alone,
and that may be one reason why it was difficult in the past, when a letter carrier was
absent, to have his round delivered. However, a socialization process between letter
carriers existed when they were sorting letters together between 6:00 and 8:30 in the
morning. With new sorting machines, this socialization process more or less disap-
peared and the collective side of their work seems to be reduced. Could this have an
impact on their professional consciousness as a professional corps? Could that have
an impact on the quality of their work when their identification to the institution may
be reduced by this individualisation of their work? Those are questions for which we
have no answer but that need to be asked.
Individualisation of work is certainly more obvious for counter clerks as the configura-
tion of post offices clearly reduced the collaboration between clerks. Clerks are now
facing the customers more or less alone in the post office, as the window separating
the clerks from the customers does not exist anymore. Hanique (2004) gives a very
good account of this change. Again, like for letter carriers, this individualisation of
work has a non-negligible impact on the collective side of their work. It is even rein-
forced by the managers who tend to individualise the sales objectives for each clerks.
One clerk mentioned that this new culture of results and figures is sometimes leaving
“esprit de corps” and team spirit behind. This individualization of work may also have
some consequence on the meaning and the quality of their work.
Even if the increased instability, hardness and individualisation of their work may be
criticized as a result of this search for increased productivity, reforms and changes
were also aimed at improving the conditions of work of the employees. Some em-
ployees may contest that they are offered better job conditions but Jean-Paul Bailly,
the chairman of the company usually defends his own policy: employees have job
security (be they civil servant or under contract); fixed-term contract have been con-
siderably reduced (less than 3%) and preferred by open-ended contracts; part-time
work is not anymore imposed when needed; mobility is limited to a maximum of 30
kilometres. Jean-Paul Bailly also explains that employees are better professionalized
through trainings. However, letter carriers and counter clerks are both front-office
employees and managers have difficulties to give them time for training as they hard-
ly find someone to stand in for them (La Broise and Roquet, 2006). Other benefits
exist from the changes implemented inside the company such as new modernized
buildings that obviously offer better equipments and conditions of work inside delivery
centres or post offices.

3.2.    Managers under pressure: are they given responsibilities?
Managers, be they post offices managers or delivery centres managers, have been
required to implement all reforms and changes in their unit. Faced to this huge reor-
ganisation process, they complain: about the lack of leeway and the fake autonomy
they are theoretically given; about the paradoxical injunctions they face from their
hierarchy, employees and customers; about the frequency and the speed of chang-
es; and about the amount of activity they have to deal with.
The main complaint from managers is directly a consequence from a search for
productivity: their activity is clearly limited even if the reform RDM was supposed to
give them more responsibilities. As we already explained, they cannot really negoti-

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ate their objectives with their hierarchy, as RDM and following reforms such as “Ter-
rain” for the post offices have not been appropriated by territorial and local managers:
Delahaye (2009) clearly explains that the culture of most of those managers is exe-
cution oriented rather initiative oriented.
The main consequence is that they are all put under pressure about their workforce,
a “quantophrenic” pressure as Salaün (2008) puts it. As a lot of tools have been de-
veloped to better measure their activity and “mathematically” forecast their needs, all
managers are given objectives in term of employment. But the trend towards automa-
tion and the decline of their traditional activity make that all the reorganisation pro-
cesses require that the managers reduce their workforce. In a company were no
layoffs really exist, where transfers do not exist because all units are over employing,
how can you reduce your workforce? Human resource management is the most em-
blematic example of the lack of leeway and autonomy.
Managers also have to abide by a lot of procedures, rules or policies. The problem is
obvious in post offices where instructions are coming in a disorganised manner from
all branches of the companies (mail, parcels, banking). And they have no financial
budget and no leeway on their human resources to better meet those objectives.
Most of them try to “do odd jobs” to find solutions locally: some make the employees
believe the reorganisation is theirs (by letting them make some decisions); some
tinker with figures to adapt their workforce to their needs and to their objectives. De-
lahaye (2009) indeed explains how some departmental directors met their objectives
by grouping more post offices in a life zone. In delivery centres, managers would ex-
plain how they play with social debt, increasing it by giving less days off, decreasing
it by increasing the number of delivery when divisible rounds are divided between
letter carriers.
The second complaint is that they have to deal with needs from their hierarchy, their
employees and their customers, and that the prescriptions they receive from different
stakeholders may be in contradiction. One contradiction that Delahaye (2009) de-
scribes is even coming from the hierarchy only. She shows how managers are facing
true dissonances between commercial policies and productivity objectives: they are
asked to be more commercially aggressive and at the same time they are asked to
reduce their workforce. Some managers therefore try to be innovative to attain their
objectives: main example is when they create internal local challenges to boost
sales, even if those local challenges are theoretically forbidden in the company.
Managers are unanimously agreeing that the company had no other choice but to
modernise itself. But they complain on the fact that this modernisation has perhaps
started too late and that the pace is today too fast for them. Reorganisation process-
es are succeeding to each other every eighteen months and managers don’t feel
they have enough time to attain their new objectives. One manager explained that he
needed time to adapt social equity and fairness to his particular situation, and that,
finally after two years, he thought he succeeded. What should not be neglected is
that managers are changing position every three to five years and that when they get
a position in a new post office (or a delivery centre), they have to cope with the em-
ployees who are working there: they do not choose their collaborators. One post of-
fice managers even testified that when she arrived in her post office, six counter
clerks over ten were socially problematic employees (alcoholism, absenteeism, de-
pression, etc.).

                                                                                      13

The last complaint that we want to stress is that managers are today dealing with a
larger perimeter than before, both in terms of geographical units they are supervising
and in terms of policies they have to implement. The post office managers we met
mainly complained because they had so many policies and instructions to implement
coming from all four branches of the company. They find it hard to implement every-
thing and to keep informed about everything. Some managers also complained that it
was not always easy to deal with their objectives when they have 4 to 6 units to su-
pervise.
Finally, even if managers are supposed to have more tools to supervise their activity,
their conditions have so much changed and they are put under such a pressure that
it is difficult to distinguish how much they benefit from potential productivity gains. Are
productivity gains more a way to secure their job rather than help them in their man-
agement process? To be sure, managers have now a larger perimeter to supervise
and normalized policies may sometimes help.

3.3.     Customers: are productivity gains customer oriented?
The main argument, or pretext, that has been used to justify any reform or change
implemented inside the company was that it was to better satisfy customers. What
are the main consequences of the increased productivity for customers? Are there
any benefits? Results show that changes provide mitigated benefits to customers:
even if statistical measures should show an increase of satisfaction and even if
standardisation and segmentation of customers are providing a better professionali-
zation of the service, we cannot conclude that customers are obviously benefiting
from this increased productivity.
The first assumption is that the increased productivity should increase the quality and
homogeneity of the service delivered to customers. La Poste therefore publishes re-
sults that show that 93% of the parcels are actually delivered 2 days after they were
sent in 2009, way much better than in 2002 with only 73% in due delivery time. Fig-
ures also improved for the ordinary letter: 69,1% delivered in one day in 2003 com-
pared to 84,4% in 2009. However, those statistics remain lower than competitors’
abroad, and those statistics don’t tell about the true satisfaction from customers. Are
they looking for a deadline or are they looking for other features of quality?
The second assumption is that if the processes are improved, the cost should im-
prove and the price should decrease. The price of the stamp for ordinary mail went
from 0,46 Euros in 2001 to 0,60 Euros in 2011. Over ten years, the price increased
by more than 30% and hardly reflects a potential price reduction from increased
productivity. Meanwhile, post offices have been closed and it is hardly true to say that
the geographical coverage hasn’t been reduced. Many services are not anymore free
of charge. For instance, professional have to pay for the collection of their mail at
their office; all customers have to pay for the forwarding of their mail; etc.
The evolution of industrial processes had an impact on the service to customers and
the report from the Cour des Comptes (2010) clearly explains that customers are dis-
satisfied because they are not consulted when such reorganisation occurs. It is true
for professional customers who may have a large volume of letters to send and/or to
receive. It is also true for private individuals who now have no other choice but to use
an automaton when they go to a post office. Even if the configuration of the post of-

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fices has been improved, some customers are still looking for a personalised rela-
tionship rather than an impersonal relationship. However, some customers are happy
that the queue has been reduced at the post office. Many other changes have an
impact on the service and were not necessarily appreciated by the customer: parcel
carriers are not always as efficient as letter carriers (they do know the arrangements
with customers); parcels and registered letters are not always delivered when cus-
tomers are at home (too time consuming when there are too many stairs to climb);
ordinary parcels do not exist anymore, only “Colissimo” with a guarantee on the
deadline are sold (which means more expensive for customers); letters are systemat-
ically sent back to the sender when there is a small mistake on the street number of
the letter; hours of collection are made earlier; etc.
Another critic that is often mentioned is that the separation between mail, parcels and
financial activities makes it more difficult for customers when they want to formulate a
claim. They make no difference between a post office and a letter carrier, and are
often disorientated when they go to a post office about a delivery problem and cannot
get an answer from the post office. A centralised phone number (3631) was created
to give a single interlocutor to customers and a more professionalized service. How-
ever, in reality, post office and delivery centres are not always satisfied about this
new service and criticize its complexity to meet some specific request from custom-
ers.
Finally, when we look at some statistics, we may wonder if customers are more satis-
fied. In 2001, 90% of the customers were satisfied of their post office; in 2008, only
82% remained satisfied (Ailleret, 2008). Claims in front of the mediator of La Poste
tripled between 2003 and 2008 (Cour des Comptes, 2010). Those figures should be
mitigated by the fact that large customers get a pretty much more customized service
than before and numerous innovations have been made for them (La Burgade,
2009).

3.4.     Organisation and shareholders: are productivity gains im-
         proving the industrial process and the benefits?
As employees, managers and customers don’t obviously benefit from productivity
gains, we may assume that those gains are more benefiting to the company itself
and its shareholder. Are those productivity translated into higher profits and a better
performance – financial and social – of the company? To be sure, La Poste distribut-
ed its first dividends to its shareholder in 2008, but the organisation still suffers from
different problems.
2008 is a turning point for La Poste as it is the first time the company paid dividends
to its shareholder: 141 millions Euros which represent 15% of the net income. How-
ever, compared to other large French companies, La Poste is not very generous.
The report from the Cour des Comptes (2010) clearly shows that productivity hasn’t
much increased between 2003 and 2009, as the reduction of the volume of letter off-
set the gains from the reduction of the workforce. La Poste answers by giving im-
proved figures of automation in new sorting centres. This report is particularly severe
as it considers that the modernisation of the operator was not sufficiently adapted to
the decline of the volume of activity. This decline associated with the cost of modern-
isations make a difficult equation for the company to find capital for its investments.

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The company even decided to sell its new sorting centres to investment vehicles and
to rent them so as to get more cash for other investments. For financial activities, the
same report explain that La Banque Postale does not benefit from its productivity
gains because the retail outlet network is too expensive.
The main problem that the organisation suffers from is the cannibalisation that may
exist between the different branches of the company. Mail, parcels, banking and re-
tail outlets networks are now completely independent and they may compete each
others. Financial centres which depend from La Banque Postale are now developing
their own commercial activity, in competition with financial advisers in the retail outlet
network (Cour des comptes, 2010). Delivery centres are also competing with post
offices for the sale of products and services; and they try to make the customer come
to the delivery centre (for instance, to collecte undelivered registered letters) rather
than to the post office. Both La Banque Postale and the Mail branch estimate that the
cost of the network is too expensive for them.
The second problem that the company may face is the fact that the main factor of
productivity gains is the reduction of the workforce. All those changes had to be deli-
cately implemented, as they are all potential “social bomb” and sources for strikes.
We may consider that on this point, La Poste was successful as strikes have been
limited. However, this result comes from the fact that the company refuses to do any
layoffs, which means that productivity gains cannot be fully appreciated today as the
reduction of the workforce is not immediate.
The industrialisation of processes clearly shows the way La Poste wanted to improve
both its profitability and to homogenise the quality of services. All those changes and
tools were aimed at improving the quality on average, even if employees and cus-
tomers don’t always perceive it this way as they were used to adapt the service to
particular demands. The main example is how “Facteur d’avenir” has been designed
so as to reduce the number of rounds that were not covered when a letter carrier was
absent.
However, one main question remains: what about the social purpose of the compa-
ny? For years, the company was used by the State as a way to contribute to the so-
cial cohesion of the country. It was one of the bigger employers in France and offered
many non-qualified jobs. Today, La Poste improved its recruitment with more quali-
fied personnel, more commercial oriented (Cartier, 2001) and the aim is more profit
oriented. One should question if La Poste is now a private company looking only for
profits and should distribute dividends to its shareholder or if it should still participate
– unofficially – to the social cohesion of the country.

4.       Conclusion

Today, La Poste is facing reorganisation and modernisation processes very frequent-
ly so as to improve its productivity. We have presented in this paper how those
changes have been concretely implemented. We have also tried to give an account
of how this trend towards flexibility, normalisation and polyvalence had an impact on
the organisation, its employees, its managers and its customers. The main feature of

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productivity gains remains: for a service producer, wages represent 2/3 of the costs
and the best way to improve productivity is to reduce the workforce.
Our main conclusion is that this search for productivity gains is mainly epitomized by
an industrialisation process which considers that the service is homogeneous. Every-
thing is more or less normalized inside the company, and employees and managers
have officially little if no leeway to adapt the service to the customer. Some changes
are obviously reducing the interaction with the customer, especially the automatons.
How can an operator continue to advertise its trust from the customers if the relation
is not physically maintained? Is it possible to industrialise human feelings and behav-
iours? How can employees be dedicated to their work if the pressure, instability,
hardness at work increases?
The main question that may be asked is the reliability of the performance measures
that are intensively used within the company to design each reorganisation and mod-
ernisation processes. Even if Gadrey (1991) already explained that outputs and in-
puts are hardly measured in service activities, the company give a large importance
to those measures. We agree with Jeantet (2001) when she explains that standard
times for each operation are set by the head office and does not represent the reality
of the interaction with the customer: those standard times, used for the configuration
of the units and for the workforce allocations, assume a perhaps exaggerated homo-
geneity of the service.
Industrialized processes are therefore not always immediately benefiting to all stake-
holders. Even if it may improve the performance as a whole, does it contribute to the
durability of the company? What is the aim of La Poste today: making profits or meet-
ing customers’ needs? Are those two elements really conflicting?

5.      References

Ailleret, F. (2008): Oui, La Poste a un bel avenir devant elle… Rapport présenté par
          François Ailleret, Commission sur le développement de La Poste, December.
Benghozi, P.-J. (1998): De l’organisation scientifique du travail à l’organisation scien-
      tifique du client : l’orientation client, focalisation de nouvelles pratiques
      managériales. Réseaux 91, October, pp. 13-29.
Berthelot, L. (2006): Destructuration et actualisation du rapport au travail. In La
        Burgade, E. (de); Roblain, O. (ed.): Bougez avec La Poste, les coulisses
        d’une modernisation. Parsi: La Dispute, pp. 175-188.
Cartier, M. (2001): Nouvelles exigences dans les emplois d’exécution des services
         publics ; l’observation des épreuves orales du concours du facteur. Genèses
         42, March, pp. 72-91.
Cour des comptes (2003): Les comptes et la gestion de La Poste (1991-2002). Rap-
       port au Président de la République, October.
Cour des comptes (2010): La Poste: un service public face à un défi sans précédent,
       une mutation nécessaire. Rapport public thématique, July.

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