Australia Post delivers bonuses to stem staff exodus
The sheer love of letters and desire for deliveries simply isn’t enough to keep the good men and women of the national postal service loyal to the firm, it seems, with the embattled board said to have resorted to cash payments to stem the exodus of staff in recent months.
Margin Call has previously noted a steady stream of departures from Australia Post, which at last count was at least eight, two of which, Michael Oates and Vicki Ballantyne, are headed to work with their former chief Christine Holgate at rival Global Express.
Such is the pull of private equity’s deep pockets, you might say.
Fitting, then, that Lucio Di Bartolomeo and his board have reportedly signed off on substantial cash payments to keep their experience in house.
Executive general manager of deliveries, Rod Barnes, who has been on staff since 2016, is just one such exec said to have signed an agreement for as much as $250,000 as long as he stays the course for 12 months.
That’s on top of his already six-figure annual salary, and he’s likely not the only one in the tight-knit executive team of seven.
We wonder what the future holds, then, for head of people and culture Sue Davies, after she showed her allegiance to her former leader Holgate by wearing suffragette white at Senate estimates, or even Gary Starr, business and government head who was lucky enough to score one of those now infamous Cartier watches.
A rung down in the realm of general management, there’s several more said to have been allocated retention payments of $50,000.
Australia Post wouldn’t be drawn on any such payments however, meaning we’ll just have to wait for the group’s annual report to drop in coming months, or their next appearance before estimates in October, which will be the first for new chief Paul Graham.
Executive overhaul is hardly a new phenomenon for AusPost – the exit of Holgate’s predecessor, now Latitude boss Ahmed Fahour, also prompted the departure of several key staff at the time.
All in though, such retention payments add to a rapidly increasing tally of collateral damage for the postal service in the wake of Holgate’s dismissal.
Just this week Post paid out a mammoth $1.1m in settlement with its former chief, with HR costs only set to balloon if you count any fees for lawyers, consultants or recruiters.
But who’s counting?
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Dollars and Census
Unfolding lockdowns affecting so many millions of Australians and the end of the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday means there’ll be little more to do come Tuesday night except tackle the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ 2021 Census.
What fun.
Conducted every five years, last time around in 2016 the Census was a complete debacle when the IBM-supplied technology collapsed under denial of service attacks and other issues.
Last time the ABS and its Census was under the watch of then minister and now deposed deputy prime minister Michael McCormack, when the ABS was forced to close down the Census website and IBM’s reputation took a battering.
The fiasco ended up costing IBM more than $30m in compensation to the government for the cost of the bungled project, a subject even more recent boss Katrina Troughton can’t escape all these years later.
“It is about how you react and how you step up and continue in a trusted way to work and resolve situations,” the boss since 2019 told Margin Call colleague Ticky Fullerton at the weekend.
This time around, unsurprisingly, the American tech giant is believed not to have even pitched for the Census work, with professional services firm PwC named as official IT supplier and working on the project since May 2019 under the watchful eye of Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar.
So how much are we sinking into the technology to make sure the national collection of data goes off without a hitch?
The PwC contract has been awarded in four parts, which so far has earned the firm a total of $38.1m.
It’s a big number, but so much is at risk if it all comes a cropper under the watch of relatively new boss Tom Seymour.
Fingers crossed.
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Locked-down listing
Oh the timing of listing a $40m-plus mansion for sale on the cusp of yet another Melbourne lockdown. Number six, to be exact.
Such is the luck of Kelly Healey, the wife of Mark Healey, who is the UK-born son of British billionaireEddie Healey, with the Melbourne-born 37-year-old putting her Lansell Rd, Toorak mega-mansion up for sale as Victorian Premier Dan Andrews implements yet another period of confinement for the state capital due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Healey paid $20m for the home on one of the suburb’s grandest streets in 2015 and embarked on a complete luxury renovation of the pile, which features five bedrooms, a cinema room, two studies and three kitchens. Of course, there are the necessary tennis court and pool, too.
Not a bad spot to spend another lockdown.
But now it’s on the market with a price indication of between $40m and $44m, with Healey now facing the prospect that buyers won’t be able to even get into the home for at least another week for viewings.
Healey has bought a new home just nearby, somewhat smaller than her Lansell Rd estate, on Yarradale Rd, for $11.6m from Treasury Wine Estates chairman Paul Rayner and wife Ruth.
You would have to hope it comes with a well-stocked wine cellar.
Rayner is also a Qantas director and on the board of what is now the Ryan Stokes-chaired Boral, though that is not expected to be for long.
Meanwhile scion Healey, 49, who has business interests from London to Melbourne and Los Angeles in the likes of renewable energy and content production, has outlaid $12m for an apartment on Toorak’s Mathoura Rd, adding to his property portfolio that includes a $16m Mornington Peninsula weekender.
Despite the pandemic, so much cash to splash.
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