It's all a question of excellence ?

In the end, it was the company close to the federal government that won the race: the PostMail Group unit of Swiss Post was presented with the "ESPRIX Swiss Award for Excellence" by Valentin Vogt, President of the Swiss Employers' Association. Ulrich Hurni, Head of PostMail and Deputy Head of Group, was overjoyed to receive the award in front of around 700 invited guests from the worlds of business and politics at the KKL Lucerne: "The ESPRIX Award shows that we have successfully taken the joint path to excellence and that our customers are also benefiting from this.

Mr. Hurni, how do you assess the value of corporate awards in general and the ESPRIX Award for Excellence in particular?

Ulrich Hurni: I am not a collector of prizes. That wouldn't suit our company either. But the ESPRIX Award is very valuable to me. Because it marks the provisional end of a long journey that we started a good six years ago. We wanted to achieve one goal along the way, and that goal was to win this competition.

You have to work hard for the ESPRIX Award and go through an assessment. How did you experience this?

The assessment was preceded by several internal assessments, some of which were also accompanied externally. These were good training sessions. The entire application procedure was also a good piece of work. Finally, a large team of assessors took a close look at our company, starting with myself and the management. Over the course of several days, the assessors also visited the companies spread all over Switzerland. I found the whole process to be very professionally conducted. That's fair to say.

Finally, the jury's report was available. In particular, it praised "the networking of the physical and digital consignment business, systematically guided by tight financial management". How does this tight financial management influence the daily work of the employees? Do you become faster and better by saving money?

We are indeed forced to make savings. Look: although we generate sales of 2.9 billion francs and EBIT of 330 million. Since 2004, a letter has cost one franc, but the number of letters sent is steadily decreasing while the number of addressees is increasing. So there's no getting around cost optimization and measures to increase efficiency. In the past, you may have known the postman personally. Today, delivery is carried out by teams, and that's where the market comes in. If it turns out that team X is faster than team Y, then the question is asked as to why this is so that the right improvement measures can be taken.

A central element for continuous improvement in your company is Kaizen. As the boss, how do you set a good example?

I simply try to keep things in order according to the 5S principle. This helps me to get rid of unnecessary ballast. But that is only a small drop in the ocean. The real improvement processes take place outside the company.

But how do you transport the Kaizen concept across all hierarchy levels so that everyone can get behind it?

We were lucky enough that a major project was about to be implemented, namely the complete changeover of letter sorting according to delivery sequence. This means that the top letter in the postman's stack is also destined for the first mailbox on his route. This project, which affected the entire process, was a good opportunity to introduce Kaizen at all levels at the same time. Everyone involved was invited to help shape the processes and make their own suggestions for improvement.

That probably had a motivating effect as well?

Yes, because of the direct participation, the employees felt that they were really taken seriously.

That's probably a lot. How quickly are the suggestions for improvement implemented?

Of course, this starts locally in the respective team, then the suggestions are taken to the other regions. Good ideas spread like wildfire throughout the entire company. However, this presupposes that the information channels must also be right.

Not only Kaizen, but the entire EFQM model has now been implemented in your company. Was there a decisive moment to introduce EFQM at PostMail?

There was indeed, in the person of our quality manager Marco Schöpf. He had the task of reorganising the entire division. As a trained EFQM assessor, he ultimately convinced me of this model as well.

And how was it possible to implement the model across all hierarchical levels?

A lot of support was provided in the teams by the respective team leaders. To ensure that knowledge is not lost, we consistently plan successors and engage in talent management. The motto is "Strengthening strengths". The introduction of Kaizen makes a decisive contribution here.

Now you have achieved a goal by winning the prize. Where do the next challenges lie now?

After all, we receive the targets from the federal government. Accordingly, we have to report annually. Among other things, we measure customer satisfaction. Even if this is high, we want to constantly improve. Cost management remains a constant challenge. The great successes in terms of increasing efficiency are over, thanks to investments in even more automation. It is now a matter of fine-tuning.

Speaking of customer satisfaction: Swiss Post is part of the "public service" and is therefore very much in the focus of consumers, who then often only make out service cuts. How difficult is it to be "excellent" at all?

In my opinion, this is due to a typically Swiss characteristic of often only seeing the negative. I've seen it differently in the US, where people praise a lot of things that aren't even average in terms of quality... But the fact is that Swiss Post's service still goes far beyond what the law requires as a basis for provision. And we're really holding back on cutting back on services. If we do, it is always in consultation with those affected. We do not systematically cut back services; instead, we focus on quality. We survey 15,000 customers every year, and they recently rated the quality of our services at 92 on a scale of 1 to 100. That says a lot.