Background

Magyar Posta is in a special position both as Hungary’s largest employer with almost 36,000 employees working for the company throughout the country and as an entirely state-owned enterprise. It has a responsibility to its employees for whom Magyar Posta means a job and the source of their livelihood on the one hand and, on the other, it has to maintain its position and operate successfully in a partly competitive position in the market which is monopolized only for universal postal services.

In Hungary, the expected date of full postal market opening is 1 January 2013. We are preparing for liberalisation, like the majority of national posts in Europe, by improving quality, by seeking ways of having several strings to our bow, and by increasing efficiency and reducing costs.

In this situation we have to find the right response in employment policy which enables our company to meet the challenges of the crisis, ensuring the livelihood of our employees and at the same time retaining our market leading position in the postal services market.

Employment policy

As regards the financial crisis, the expectation of the owner, the Hungarian state, is that Magyar Posta should only reduce its employment level in justified cases and with great circumspection.

A review of our employment policy was made from the aspect of job security because we can contribute to solving problems for society in general by taking preventative action as the country’s largest employer.

Besides the efforts we have made to retain jobs, there are two programmes in our business plan for 2008 which support the aims of the state employment policy by creating jobs during their implementation.

1. Within the scope of social responsibility Magyar Posta plans to employ about 250 people with reduced capability to work in administrative areas, in this way linking in with the e-public administration development programme. Through the programme the integration of handicapped people into the local community will be aided in 200-250 towns.

2. One of the elements of mail processing, which until now was done by labour hire, will be solved by using our own employees in 2008. Within this programme 100 long-term unemployed people are planned to be employed. The social significance of the programme is enhanced by the fact that we wish to implement it in disadvantaged small regions with a high rate of unemployment.

A complex outplacement programme containing several elements has been compiled by the HR department for the Postapartner programme launched in the spirit of preparing for liberalisation (aiming to give more than 1,000 small, uneconomic post offices over to enterprise).

An important element in retaining jobs is the Internal Labour Market created on 1 May 2008. During its creation the company restructured the existing recruitment/selection process and databank system, focusing on the more effective realisation of an (internal) postal job centre.