Guernsey Post plans to get mail delivered, even if virus affects staff

Chief executive Boley Smillie said that Guernsey Post was taking the situation seriously because that was what customers and staff wanted the company to do. But he stressed nobody should panic with careful planning already under way and most cases likely to be mild.

Guernsey Post has already taken a number of steps already in support of community-wide activity to mitigate the spread of the virus, reflecting government advice – which Mr Smillie described as ‘very good’.

Practical precautions were also being taken, for example in relation to postal workers out on delivery. ‘Quite a lot of parcels these days require a signature or require some form of contact and we’re using electronic handheld scanners for that process,’ he said.

‘So we’ve got a process in place now where customers don’t have to use those handheld scanners. We’re signing for parcels on the customer’s behalf, leaving items in safe places, rather than checking people are home straightaway. So we’ve got advice going out to customers.

‘Changes in procedures like that, which are all designed to kind of limit exposure and limit the amount of contact.’

On whether post was safe to handle for example from Italy – which is the European country worst-hit by coronavirus – Mr Smillie said: ‘The advice that we’ve obtained from the UK government’s website is that post is safe to handle and that’s the information we’ve passed on to our employees as well. Having said that we’re supplying disposable gloves to employees as well if they want to use them.

‘We’re giving the very practical advice of making people aware they need to keep their hands washed and cleaned as much as possible.

‘So all of those well-publicised initiatives we’re adopting, and we’re listening to the advice on a daily basis and refreshing that internally as when we need to.’

Asked about the safety of collecting post from Guernsey Post’s mail collection counter, he said: ‘Yes, it is. Again, for our mail collection counter, we’re signing for parcels directly ourselves. So you just have to come as normal and we’ll pass the parcel to you in the normal fashion.’

Business continuity plans were also in place should the coronavirus outbreak worsen and a substantial portion of Guernsey Post’s workforce be unable to physically go into work due to illness or the need to self-isolate.

‘In that respect, the actual plans have to be quite dynamic because whatever the circumstances are, it’s very difficult to predict how many and then who. Our staff have a lot of knowledge about specific areas of the island. So depending upon who might be off sick and when it would greatly affect our plans.

'However, our overriding priorities are in the first instance to make sure that we are able to continue to export mail from the island for primarily business and then secondly to maintain some level of delivery service depending upon the scale of absence that we might be dealing with.

‘We particularly want to keep parcels flowing through to people, particularly those people that may be more vulnerable and need those deliveries. And we’ll do that with the frequency being determined depending upon how many people were off.’

Asked about planning assumptions, Mr Smillie went on: ‘What we’re working towards now is working under the assumption that the number of cases in Guernsey is going to increase – and inevitably, at some point, our staff may start to be affected by that.

‘So much of our work is about slowing that rate of infection, or at the moment, avoiding it completely. But in reality, it’s probably about slowing it so as to make sure that this happens over a longer period of time, possibly, than all upfront and [that] does have issues in relation to that sort of continuity of business.

‘So if we’ve got a fifth of the workforce off, there may well be some minor changes to our service provision, but on the whole we could probably cope at that level. Anything more than we’ll have to start thinking about the service provision that we that we able to deliver.’

When asked about the possibility of food delivery, Mr Smillie said that Guernsey Post had also been invited by the government to take part in wider contingency planning and would be attending those.

‘In addition to that, our posties are very knowledgeable, not just about the kind of delivery routes, but the people they’re delivering to. So we’ll always try and maintain a level of service to those people we think might need it and that can be supplemented by any advice we get from government or any other charity or organisation within the third sector.

‘We always should be able to maintain some level of delivery service.’