It’s a brave CEO who puts her phone number and personal email on the corporate website but Australia Post CEO Christine Holgate told the QUT Business Leaders Forum she does that to make sure staff and customers can communicate with her.
“And yes it does mean I come to work and there’s a couple of hundred emails,” she said.
Fresh from being the business lead at the ASEAN meeting in Brisbane last weekend, Ms Holgate feels a huge obligation to ensure the sustainability of Australia Post to preserve the jobs of thousands of people and keep post offices open in remote areas now that the banks have gone.
“What surprised me at Australia Post was the passion of our frontline workers … who’ve given their life in our organisation,” Ms Holgate said.
“Ninety nine per cent of the people in the company believed that purpose was the reason why they came to work. If you’ve got purpose and passion you can get through this massive decline in letters. We might have a few challenges to do it.”
One of her first moves was to instigate the distinctive red Australia Post logo shirts in the newly acquired parcel business instead of the blue of the Star Track business they had bought.
“I wanted it to be one brand and who wouldn’t want the word Australia in their name? The Chinese would pay a fortune for it.
“When you knock on the door the lady who answers has to feel safe. She trusts the postie, why would she trust the guy in the blue top?
“We had lost sight of who the real customer was and most importantly we had lost sight of the importance of culture.”
Ms Holgate, who describes herself as a freemarket socialist, took up the reins of Australia’s oldest organisation last year, did not have a promising start to her career. Told by her father ‘it’s my way or the highway’ she chose the railway and arrived at Euston Station in London with a suitcase knowing no one and with nowhere to live.
In a talk redolent with raw emotion Ms Holgate credits an old woman, Flo, who ‘saw something’ in her 18 year old, shaved-headed, nose-ringed self, with changing her life. Flo and she set up a little business to fund her business education which led to jobs in the UK that paid well beyond the 50p an hour she started on in a burger joint.
She arrived in Australia in 2003 eager to try something different and worked for Telstra.
When Marcus Blackmore of Blackmore vitamins fame was urged to hire her he asked why he should give her the keys to his bank account, she replied “Why should I give you the keys to my career?”.
She got the job and took the company’s share price at one point to $200. It could be due in no small part to the photo she managed to get of herself with Chinese president Xi Jinping at the G20 in 2014.
“That year we had $750,000 of sales (with China), by the end of June we had $50 million and last year we did $500 million,” Ms Holgate said.
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