Thousands of temps needed as Christmas goes online

The growth of online shopping means that carriers are taking on thousands of temporary staff to meet the Christmas peak this year.

Royal Mail has launched a drive to recruit 19,000 temporary staff to help sort the Christmas post.

It wants to recruit 15,000 workers across England, 1,100 in Scotland, 600 in Wales and 400 in Northern Ireland. Parcelforce Worldwide is also recruiting 2,000 extra people

Positions are available between mid November and early January 2015. Royal Mail has set up a dedicated web site for people to apply for the positions .

Yodel has also set out plans to add 5,000 full and part-time staff to its UK workforce in preparation for the Christmas boom in online sales, with the firm expecting to handle up to one million parcels per day.

The new jobs will include 750 warehouse staff to work at Yodel’s parcel sorting centres; 760 employed drivers; and 470 self-employed van drivers with their own vehicles, to deliver to and collect parcels from customers. In addition to this, the company has announced a further 2,830 vacancies for self-employed couriers

Royal Mail has also introduced a new small parcel format which is much bigger in size and almost doubles the maximum volume available. And under a promotion which will run until 18 January, all second class small parcels weighing up to 2kg will cost the same – a saving of £1 on second class small parcels weighing between 1kg and 2kg.

Source: logisticsmanager.com
Portal: logistik-express.com