Case studies

New Zealand Post

New Zealand Post is the fifth largest employer in New Zealand, with nearly 9300 employees. It is internationally recognised as providing one of the most efficient and inexpensive postal services in the world.

New Zealand Post was awarded the HRINZ 2003 Regional HR Initiative of the Year Award and was a finalist in the national award for their work on Talent Management and Succession Planning using Matrixone products.

The business drivers and rationale for their talent management and succession planning programme were:-

To lift overall business performance and drive a stronger performance culture.
Compete in an increasingly tight labour market with fierce competition for talent.
Better understand its people capability, motivation, drive and leadership profiles.
Reduce the turnover of top performers and create a compelling employee value proposition to ensure retention of these staff.
Managing on-going talent needs - planning for succession and addressing resourcing issues in key areas of the business.
To develop and implement a fully customised and integrated talent management and succession planning programme.
Align business and people strategies and reduce the fragmented approach to people and capability management.

Results

After three years of the programme, New Zealand Post's achievements include:-

A fully integrated Talent Management and Succession Planning programme aligned to business and management processes. The programme is seen as being critical to business success and regarded by the Executive Team and Business Unit heads as a strategic intervention. It remains one of the top five HR interventions in the business.
A 'live' database of potential future business leaders helps managers in their decision making on new appointments, succession and workforce planning needs.
Priority being given to talent as 'corporate assets'. Appointments are based on a next logical step basis, taking development into account. There is a culture of actively using the talent pool, both vertically and horizontally, across the business. A significant number of the talent pool has shifted positions either up or across the business including four appointments to the executive team.
A benchmark of New Zealand Post's capability within the market as a result of the talent gaps identified as part of the programme. Two recent external appointments to the executive team recognised a need to inject "new blood" and address capability issues identified as part of the talent management programme.
A new culture where people capability issues and career management are openly discussed. Previously this was almost non-existent.
More open dialogue between managers and their talent about the individual's placement on the talent matrix, their potential and performance, and understanding what needs to be done to assist in career management. Peer review has also helped to 'take the blinkers off' for many managers.
People capability now receives considerable attention not only throughout the business, but also at executive and board level. The Executive are champions of the programme and report to the Board directly on talent issues.
Management actively link Talent Identification outcomes to their annual business planning and budgeting cycles.
Talent strategies exist at both an organisational and business unit level. The Executive and line managers own these strategies and implementation is supported and monitored by HR. Each business unit knows the 'health' of their people capability and has action plans in place to address any weaknesses or exploit its strengths.
Greater discernment on performance issues within the talent pool and a wider spread of performance ratings across the business, consistent with world best practice.
A reduction in turnover of Tier 3 managers to 7-10% from a previous high of 30-40% prior to 2001. This represents a significant cost saving to the business estimated to be approximately $4.75m a year.
A 95% retention of top performers in the talent pool through using the Matrixone talent retention product called EVP. New Zealand Post knows that 96% of the current talent pool intend to remain working for Post in the near future.
The ready supply of quality candidates from the market, indicating that New Zealand Post's "talent" brand is attractive to the marketplace.

Summary

New Zealand Post and its talent management and succession planning programme remains a key business initiative recognised both internally and externally as a forward thinking and innovative HR intervention.

The talent management and succession planning programme has evolved to become a sophisticated end-to-end integrated system critical to driving business success. The programme will continue develop and evolve over time but is currently recognised as world best practice delivering quality outcomes for the business. New Zealand Post continues to be sought by other companies to share their experience and assist them in their thinking on talent management and succession planning.

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