‘Merchants are in better shape than last year’: Australia Post urges early Christmas shopping, looks to hire 7000 staff

Online shoppers should start tackling their Christmas list 108 days early to avoid delays and disruption, Australia Post says, as the national postal service launches a mammoth recruitment drive to attract enough workers to fill the holiday rush.

Australia Post chief executive Paul Graham says supply chain issues from the Russia-Ukraine conflict, as well as the historic labour and skills shortage and pandemic absences, mean it will not be deliveries as usual this year — nor, possibly, next.

“We just haven’t had one thing come out of sync, we have had three or four things come out of sync at the same time,” Graham said.

“And the cost of shipping has gone through the roof … that’s not going to go away for the next 12 to 18 months or potentially longer.”

When asked when the best time for customers to start their Christmas shopping was, Graham responded: “Now.”

“We’re ready for it,” he continued. “I think the merchants are in much better shape than they have been the last couple of years”.

Graham acknowledged that five consecutive months of hikes taking the cash rate from 0.1% to 2.35% (and at least two more to come) could see “people keep their money in their pocket”.

But, he warned: “If we get a similar sort of sales surge as we’ve got over the past couple of years there’ll be some challenges.”

“Hold on to your seats for the next six to 12 months, I think.”

Graham made the comments at an Australian British Chamber of Commerce lunch in Melbourne, where he continued that Australia Post was looking to hire between 5000 and 7000 workers (including thousands more forklift operators and drivers) to bolster operations.

He recognised it would be “tight” in current market conditions and would look to hire high school leavers and retirees “who have not worked for Australia Post for a while and are still physically fit and very passionate about Australia Post”.

Graham acknowledged the 50-year-low unemployment rate of 3.4% but said he personally thinks it’s closer to “zero”, though qualified that Australia Post wouldn’t be luring staff with higher wages.

“I don’t think the wages will be the challenge, but we are all fishing in the same pool, and it is an issue we saw come out of the jobs summit for every business from a coffee shop to a large organisation like Australia Post,” Graham said.

“We normally recruit between 5000 and 7000 people for our Christmas peak, and we are doing that now, we probably did that two and a half months earlier than we normally do because we can see the strains in the market.”

Australia Post has also made significant infrastructure changes including automated distribution centres to prepare for the Christmas rush, he continued, as parcels overtook letters as the primary post type for the first time in recent years.

Parcel deliveries took off during the pandemic as people turned to online shopping amid lockdowns. Last year acting CEO Rodney Boys said Australia Post sent 32% more parcels compared to pre-COVID times.

Graham says the postal service was preparing for it to reach more than 1 billion a year by 2032.

“We have also equipped the business much better than we did last peak, and we will actually be able to push product through a lot quicker, so we think that will help significantly.”

But, he qualified, “we’ve only really scratched the surface and that’s going to put real pressure on our network”.