Nightline helping corporations cope with staff Internet shopping habits
Large businesses in the Republic of Ireland are finding their mail rooms swamped by the Internet shopping activities of employees unable to pick up resulting parcels at home during the working day. Parcel carrier Nightline says it has been “inundated” by calls from corporations asking for help with the problem, with personal e-commerce deliveries accounting for as much as half all parcel traffic, and as much as 80% during the Christmas peak.
While many of the packages are generally small, there have been instances of staff receiving large televisions and computers at their work place.
The trend has been causing havoc in company mail rooms, since every package has to be processed.
Nightline is now beginning to work with some of these large corporations by installing their Parcel Motel locker terminals on the premises of national and international businesses affected.
Orla Sheils, the Parcel Motel general manager, said the move came on the back of research Nightline has conducted, prompted by the inquiries from Irish businesses.
She said with the growing popularity of e-commerce, businesses are increasingly having to find ways of managing the deluge of packages while keeping key personnel happy.
“The extent to which people are shopping online has become a more permanent and pressing topic for companies to address,” said Sheils.
“Some of those businesses to which we spoke told us that the number of parcels that their mailrooms had to process year-‘round were split equally between legitimate work items and e-commerce purchases made by staff. A considerable proportion estimated that online purchases accounted for up to 80 per cent of all parcel traffic at their offices during November and December.”
Delivery to the work place
Nightline surveyed 6,000 Irish consumers and found that 44% regularly had personal parcels delivered to their work place.
The study echoes research from the UK that suggests 200m parcels there being delivered to the workplace each year, and research from Irish regulator Comreg that concluded that a fifth of all professional staff use their office as a regular collection point for goods bought online.
Some UK government agencies have banned their staff from receiving personal parcel deliveries at the work place, including the Department for Work and Pensions and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.
A spokesperson for the DVLA said the move to ban personal parcel deliveries had been made for “efficiency and not security reasons”.
Nightline’s spokesperson told Post&Parcel that the company continues to receive enquiries from businesses about hosting one of their Parcel Motel locker banks on business premises, and so more Parcel Motel units will be deployed at these businesses in future.
Parcel Motel
Parcel Motel itself, as a public network of on-street parcel locker terminals, was launched back in July 2012 as a way for consumers to have e-commerce items delivered to a convenient collection point for access 24 hours a day.
The terminals, which can accept up to 80 parcels at a time, are now in operation in all of the Republic’s 26 counties.
Sheils said: “We have been speaking to firms in a variety of industrial sector, including technology, finance and legal services to name but a few. All are not only reporting the same problem but the same sensitivities in coping. Do they recruit extra staff and simply turn a blind eye to increasing numbers of personal parcels which their offices have to manage in order to keep staff happy? If so, that has obvious consequences for their efficiency.
“At a time when they are as keen to keep costs under control as they are to maintain staff satisfaction and productivity, it has been a difficult balance to strike.”
