TNT Post are going places – and that could include your business and home letterboxes. Steve Betts, the director of security, pictured, talks about an expanding operation.
As Steve Betts says, the challenges he has are of managing an expanding business which hopes to have 20,000 posties in five years. To put it briefly, TNT Post UK Limited is rivalling Royal Mail. It’s not like setting up a national chain to deliver, let’s say, pizzas to your door. Mail is regulated, by Ofcom. There are mail integrity codes of practice to follow, besides the health and safety law covering any workplace. As the plate says on Steve’s desk, he is director of security, safety health and environment (SHE), and (in case that isn’t enough) CSR (corporate social responsibility). Outside his window, you can see the parked cars of TNT Post’s head office at Marlow in Buckinghamshire. In a corner, a potted plant; on a coat hanger behind the door, his black suit jacket. The usual computer, calendar, telephone and mobile phone and files on his desk to hand. Little, if any, clutter. On the wall behind his chair, some 14 certificates, of fellowship in the Security Institute, ASIS UK membership, an Open University and other qualifications, including some in health and safety, from IOSH and NEBOSH. In a Waterman’s case, a pen. If that is anything to go by, Steve is a man who likes proper tools for the job.
Setting up from scratch requires recruitment, training, criminal record checks, to name a few. He’s been recruiting himself. Over the past 18 months TNT Post has opened the first dozen delivery units in west and south-west London, and recruited more than 1000 staff. Given the scale and the speed of TNT Post’s expansion, there is a need to hit the floor running; this is not an operation for security people who need to be taught the ropes. Steve speaks of wanting security managers with knowledge of RIPA (for investigations) and PACE for interviewing suspects. While the company is keeping further details of where and when it’s expanding under its hat it’s easy to predict that the UK’s other main cities from the south coast to the Scottish central belt are on the TNT radar. Some things the newcomers will have to learn include the Postal Services Act 2000, ‘which is the essential piece of legislation, under which TNT Post UK as a postal operators have a mandate to operate’. The Act includes criminal offences that the post delivery firm can use to get police involved in, if the firm chooses; more usually the firm will interview suspects to the point of having the information to discipline or dismiss an offender.
To recap, Steve not only is the company’s go-to man on questions of security and safety, but he has his safety and security team to recruit, and all the safety and security equipment to procure and (as the operation rolls out) review. Even something as simple as bicycles, made by UK firm Pashley, which have to carry perhaps 50 kilos of mail, besides the rider; and any number of things can happen to a workforce out of doors, day by day, in most parts of the country. Already in London the company has found its staff clashing – not on purpose – with gangs on estates. Steve’s security team looked into a reported case of a postie being threatened with a knife. From talking to locals and the local police, it seemed that the worker had worn a hooded top under his uniform; but in a colour that belonged to a gang from another estate. To the gang on the estate that he was delivering mail around, the colour of the hoodie was the enemy’s. Something to inform staff of and not to repeat.
The risks, then, are wider than in a depot of warehouse (and TNT Post has many of them). You may know TNT Post already, if you are the sort that pauses to look at envelopes before you tear them open to read utility, bank and telecom mailshots. TNT Post (and other private companies) will pick up mail for business clients from their premises, take it to their premises, sort it, do the logistics on behalf of the client, ‘and then re-inject it back into Royal Mail for final mail delivery’. What TNT Post is rolling out over the next five years is ‘end to end’: “We will be the conduit that picks it up from the client and puts it through the customer’s letterbox.” TNT Post evidently sees a profitable market which however means an end to the Royal Mail’s historic monopoly. A controversial end.
As Steve says drily, Royal Mail have a 380-year head-start on them, starting when the risks to the king’s post included highwaymen on horses. Royal Mail is obliged to cover the whole country, to deliver a letter with a 50p or 60p stamp to the Orkneys posted in Penzance; TNT does not. That said, the Royal Mail and private rival have similar security and safety matters; how fit for purpose are staff uniform and PPE (personal protective equipment) – such as gloves, helmet and coat, because post deliverers are on the streets and among traffic, maybe before full daylight some winter months. TNT has worked on a newly-designed work-bicycle, something that is safe – that can stand up to bumping over kerbs regularly, and is secure: so that the mail inside (rigid, plastic) panniers is locked down when the postal worker is delivering up the garden path or inside a block of flats. There is an appreciation that the bicycle and the mail it carries can only be as secure as TNT Post makes it; as with any risk, you can only mitigate it so far; you can secure the mail wonderfully, inside an armoured car, say, or even better, keep it in a locked depot!? But how would it ever get to its destination?!
This might sound a nice challenge for anyone in business to have in the 2010s, but Steve has safety, security and CSR work to do around all the properties that TNT Post is looking for in its main, urban markets. Priding itself on being a leaner, quicker and more effective operation than Royal Mail, TNT Post is looking to work out of lock-up-style units, perhaps 2000 square feet. Simply to find about 300 suitable units takes some doing; and those sites have to comply with workplace health and safety and building regulations (any asbestos? for example). These units will need access control; and CCTV. Workers will come in around 7am, get the mail sorted, and get out on their bikes for perhaps six hours. Other workers may come in around 9am – mothers who have dropped their children off at school, perhaps – to pick up their rounds and finish in time for collecting their children. Students able to do some days and not others, and the long-term unemployed, are other groups TNT Post is looking to hire and has hired, finding that by giving those out of work an opportunity is repaid by their loyalty. That said, the security challenge there is to vet the long-term unemployed; because how do you check a work record, if there isn’t one?! Or, they have moved from address to address? As in many other businesses, staff training and setting up of an operation let alone one expanding as fast as TNT Post’s is not a one-off but a process. As the delivery areas get much bigger and more diverse, so will the risks. In the main cities of the UK, how well TNT does will depend, as Steve says, on who TNT brings in to do the work, and how they are trained to do the job. That training is online and tested and in a classroom. The safety part includes manual handling and lifting, and proper footwear; and cycle maintenance (and if a check finds the cycle is in need of repair, taking it to the mechanic). Even spatial awareness is taught; are the cyclists using their peripheral vision? Yes, newcomers are taught how to ride a bike. Some cannot. The security part of that training covers the mail integrity codes, and the criminal offences, and conflict resolution – in a nutshell, walk away and don’t put yourself in danger – besides the standard operating procedures. Training for starters aims to make staff aware of what’s out there; and the mail integrity codes of practice; and why the codes are there. As with other workplaces with hazards, the trouble may come not because of something malicious, but because staff for whatever reason think they can do something better or quicker than according to the code. For instance, each delivery person has a scanner, to scan when the mail is delivered (dubbed ‘track and trace’ by TNT Post). The technology proves the mail was delivered, when it was; and that may serve to head off a customer complaint further down the line.
One long-standing problem for posties, and indeed anyone delivering or doing work door to door, is dangerous dogs. As reported in Professional Security in March, the Government has proposed to close the loophole which meant that dog owners whose animals have attacked people on private property cannot be prosecuted, even if (as has happened) the victims die. Steve reports one case so far of a delivery woman bitten by a dog in a front garden, which drew blood on the leg. TNT Post reported it to police. As Steve acknowledges, there is a lobby driven by Royal Mail to make the law against such out of control dogs more robust. And as Steve adds, whatever the new law, what will be the penalty for failing to control a dog; and will the authorities police that crime, and act? “I think the jury is out on that one.” Despite the best intentions of law-makers, and risk assessing, you cannot design out or legislate away human nature, any more you can completely design out crime, if the criminal is bent on (and equipped for) stealing that bicycle. Take cycle helmets. There’s no law that says – in the UK, at least – that you have to wear one. The medical and workplace safety evidence might say it’s obvious to wear a helmet in case of head injury or worse. But, Steve notes, there’s a lobby among some cyclists to keep the freedom not to wear a helmet, although he points to a difference between cycling for leisure and work. As for the CSR side of Steve’s job, you could describe it as TNT Post, as a global company, seeking to be planet-friendly. How to create less CO2, use less electricity (which also means a cost saving to the business); while the UK post arm expands. The company is trialling LPG and mixed-fuel vehicles; in its depots, using lighting that costs less to run and maintain and burns longer; and, to return to those Pashley bicycles, working with the UK cycle manufacturer on the materials – that tubular steel, can it be used again; and the plastic, is it recyclable?
Indeed, how to make the police interested in crime affecting business is a question for Steve as it has long been for retailers (whose goods TNT Post might be delivering to householders). Steve, former Met Police himself – all his security recruits are former police or Royal Mail Security personnel – queries whether business crime is top of police forces’ agenda, even after the police and crime commissioner elections last year. The offences against theft of post are there, as indeed is the Theft Act. But Steve doesn’t feel the 2000 Act that covers his sector is well understood by police. TNT Post has written to the London borough police commanders that they’ve set delivery units in so far, and Steve’s security people have been liaising with the local police stations. Would TNT Post prosecute offenders, employee thieves of mail, themselves, if the authorities would not? It’s a question for many businesses and indeed the postal and other regulators such as the SIA. Like them, TNT Post would have to weigh the cost, ‘but we would consider doing it if the circumstances dictated, if it was such a serious offence. But the whole area around engagement with the police is very difficult,’ Steve says. As a proud former policeman, he admits that it’s frustrating.
It struck Professional Security that Steve was – because of his three hats, security being the main one; and because of the roll-out by TNT Post from London – constantly keeping spinning plates in the air. Given that the de-regulated postal sector is moving so fast, let alone society generally and its changing demand for things delivered, and the security (and PPE and safety) equipment available, how does Steve keep himself informed, so that he can give ‘cogent advice’ to the board? Steve and his security managers are variously members of ASIS or the Security Institute; or the Worshipful Company of Security Professionals; he’ll regularly attend seminars and conferences, and exhibitions such as IFSEC; in a word, he networks. And there is the supplier Acctive Security a national provider to draw on, who provides all of TNT Post premises with CCTV, Access Control, and Intruder Alarms etc.: “It’s very much a matter of driving yourself to keep up to speed with what is happening.” That said, whereas ports or private schools or clothes retailers can informally or formally share experiences, Steve’s on his own; TNT Post, in its words, is Royal Mail’s ‘number one challenger for business mail of all kinds’.. As ever, there is a balance to strike, as with the bicycle that has to be sturdy and not easy for the local trouble-makers to ride off on, but not as big and hard to crack as some Brinks Mercedes van. Steve like many security managers has that conundrum; how to show tangible benefits? A bicycle that few or fewer delivery people fall off – how to demonstrate the value of safety, something that prevents something from happening? There are ways; few or fewer people are slipping, or tripping. In the next few years, you may see them, and their bicycles and trollies, at your workplace or house door.
Background: TNT Post had its Wimbledon delivery unit officially opened in mid-August by local MP and Minister Stephen Hammond. It plans to roll out the service in the next five years, creating 20,000 jobs. In this privatised field, it’s already in the business of handling corporate mail using the Royal Mail to deliver the items to the doorstep. Where they can, TNT Post aim to change that historic monopoly.
About TNT Post: visit www.tntpost.co.uk
About Pashley Cycles: visit www.pashley.co.uk
