Creating the perfect match between a mailmom's life and her job

Creating the perfect match between a mailmom's life and her job

Tiemersma, L.A.

Mulder, I.J. (mentor)
Tassoul, M. (mentor)
Van Beek, Y.M. (mentor)

Industrial Design Engineering

Industrial Design

2012-01-24

Graduation project for the Dutch company PostNL. Many people are interested in their part-time job of mail deliverer but resign within the first month of employment. PostNL aims for people to work as mail deliverer that have a flexible planning and can make the job a part of their life. One large target group is: housewives. These women do not want a full-time job because they have to take care of the household and the children for the main part of the day. PostNL would like to see that fewer housewives resign from the job as mail deliverer, because these women are able to work hard, like to work outside and are responsible and very loyal as well. This problem forms the objective for this graduation research: Design a nationwide implementable tool for the department of recruitment of PostNL in order to reduce turnover by improving the experience of mail deliverers in the target group of housewives by which they do not resign within the first month. Using literature and interviews research has been done on the motivation of housewives when applying for the job of mail deliverer. Found was that they are looking for a job during the school hours of the children. They do not directly work to earn money, but this is a nice extra benefit to the job. They receive all their personal excitement out of the job when they can perform it as they want to. Their main focus in life is on the children. The mail deliverer is mother in the first place and she will resign when her job interferes with that part of her life. This is especially important for mothers with children in elementary school, in the age that they can not walk home alone. If PostNL wants to keep the mothers from resigning they have to take care that the job fits perfectly in the time that the mom has available to work, the time where she does not have to take care of her children because they are on school or busy with other activities. The new campaign to attract new mail deliverers claims that the delivery of mail can become a part of your life. The next step following to the campaign is to make the job really a part of someone’s life. This can be done by helping the mothers to make the combination of the job and taking care of her family and household. Important to take into account is that the job is harder to perform within the first month. The delivery of mail takes longer than expected because the new mail deliverer needs to get experience with the job and the neighbourhood to get more efficient and faster with the job. When a mother can not make the combination within the first month, they will see the job only as an extra thing to plan into their busy life and experience more negative aspects than positive aspects. The choice is made to focus on the next step after the campaign. In the first place mothers need to be interested with the right expectations. The new campaign states that mail delivery can be a part of your life. Two different products to match the new job into a mother’s life are advised to add to the selection procedure of PostNL for new mail deliverers. Those products are specially designed for mother s with young children who want to work in the time that their children are on school to match the job to her private life. To make the perfect match between the planning of the mother and the hours available to deliver the mail input of the mother and PostNL is needed. The mother needs to get insight in her weekly schedule and has to make an estimation of her hours available to work as mail deliverer. PostNL should give clear information about the hours in which mail can be delivered (between 11 AM and 5 PM) and the length of delivery shifts per day. When a mother understands the boundaries in time set by PostNL and she is familiar with her own boundaries, partly set by appointments of the children, she will be stimulated to move appointments to other moments to make more time available to work as mail deliverer. An Online Check is developed to inform mothers that are interested for the job of mail deliverer. The campaign directs those women to the recruitment website of PostNL. By the Online Check the interested mothers can answer the question: Can the job of mail delivery be a part of my life? The mother is supported by this tool to make an overview of her time available per day of the week to deliver mail. By the Online Check she can choose if she has enough time to deliver the mail and apply for a vacancy that matches the preferred amount of hours. Later on, in the job interview will be discussed how many hours PostNL can match to her preferences. A product in this early stage, before application, makes sure that only the mothers that can match the job to their life apply for a vacancy of mail deliverer. The second advised product is the /Matchmaker. This toolkit will be send to the home address of the mothers who are in the selection procedure indicated as applicants that can need help in finding time to deliver the mail. At home the mother will keep record of all her activities for two days and tries to move appointments to fit time to deliver mail in her day. She will take the /Matchmaker to the job interview. Here a recruiter will try, together with the applying mother and the product, to make the match of her preferred hours and the delivery shifts available in her neighbourhood. When PostNL creates the perfect match of the job and the private life of the mother they will gain happy and loyal mailmom’s as employees.

mail
planning
mother
selection procedure

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:83e9909d-4a9b-4d03-940f-36f8623021fc

Campus only

Student theses

master thesis

(c) 2012 Tiemersma, L.A.