Swiss Post is restructuring its courier and express services from 1 November onwards with jobslikely to be cut due to a significant volume drop in recent years accelerated even more by the
economic slowdown.Responding to the difficult economic situation, Swiss Post intends to increase synergiesbetween distribution bases and courier centres to optimise its operations. Therefore, couriercentres in the larger conurbations including Geneva, Lausanne, Berne, Basel and Zurich as well asbranches in Winterthur, Aarau and Olten will be integrated into existing distribution bases and nolonger managed as independent organisational units. Over 300 employees who currently work at thecourier centres and branches, mostly on a part-time basis, will be transferred to the Distributiondepartment of PostLogistics.
In the last few years, Swiss Post’s courier and express services have been suffering botheconomically and structurally with significant volume declines and increasing competition in thismarket segment causing margins to fall further. This resulted in the need for permanent monitoringof organisational structures.
This consolidation process has already taken place in other regions of Switzerland with anumber of its courier centres and branches already integrated into the distribution bases back in2007, Swiss Post said in a statement. It emphasized that customers will continue to receive thesame quality of products and services despite the new structure.
With the start of organisational integration on 1 November, Swiss Post will be working on adetailed organisational and operational concept for each of the affected locations to be defined byFebruary 2010. In addition, the company plans to negotiate a redundancy plan with the trade unionsto cover any job losses with the aim to save as many jobs as possible.
Although Swiss Post expects its return on sales in mail to drop to 3.8% this year from 8.5%in 2008, the decline has been partly compensated by higher profits from financial services.
