customer service representative

delivery driver

mail carrier

retail customer service representative

senior software engineer

Australia Post

I can't quite describe a place like Australia Post. You don't hate it, but you don't enjoy it enough that it slowly kills you from the inside out. 

The workplace culture is horrific. Good coworkers are difficult to come by, often leaving the good few on their own. Management is a nightmare. In store, and in head office. I had one good manager but the others took no consideration for their employees. Had a very "I don't care as long as it doesn't affect me" attitude. Very dismissive, and often acted as if you were a nuisance. Didn't acknowledge a job well done

I worked as a Postal Services Officer and Postal Delivery Officer for 2 years at 4 different locations. Even though you're contracted to one post office, they'll send you off o another with very little notice if at all and you just have to go. 

- Communication is a nightmare. There is none. No communication at all between management, head office, even between employees. No one has any idea who's done what or is going to do what or if that's already been done because everyone is so pessimistic and hateful. 

- Culture: I haven't ever quite encountered such a negative, toxic workplace culture. In a nutshell, it seems to be: negative. That's it. That's the only criteria you need to meet to be employed there. Negative. All day long, everyone complains and complains and complains which seems exactly like what I'm doing now but if you hope you retain any glimpse of gratitude or positivity in your life don't work here. Everyone complains about everything, about everyone, backstabs everyone, and all in all just has a very, very negative and toxic outlook. They are problem-focused, not solution focused, and if a tiny, repairable problem arises, the world is going to end for them. 

- Leave: haven't ever encountered such a bizarre system. Working in the retail sector (PDO or PSO), you are entitled to 4 weeks of annual leave. But here's the catch. You are only entitled to take them in 2 blocks of 2 weeks or 1 block of 4 weeks a year. And they have to be within certain dates dictated by someone in head office who gives zero care for your social life or for the fact that you're a person. 
You are required to submit 3 preferences for your preferred holiday block for the following year in August. Your confirmation doesn't come out til about October NEXT YEAR, sometimes later. And your preferences aren't guaranteed. So it's part of the company's request that you don't book any holidays, any flights, nothing at all, until you receive your confirmed holidays, which could start as soon as one week after they are confirmed. Which means if you wanted to go overseas tickets would be through the roof in cost. You get GIVEN dates by the leave coordinator in head office. One of my coworkers didn't receive any of her 3 preferences for a getaway she had planned in November and instead got given dates in February where no one else in her life had holidays. That's their mentality, you get given dates due to "operational need" and you get to sit around at home for 4 weeks or so. There is no regard for personal life. 
Oh, and you can't take a day off throughout the year outside of those 2 week or 4 week blocks. What a joke.

- Useless coworkers. In their attempt to embrace diversity, which I'm all for, they've pretty much made it impossible to get fired from AusPost even if all you did for 8 hours a day was sit in the lunch room eating a cheese sandwich. They hire and keep staff with ZERO work ethic, who leave all the work to be done by those who actually do it and take credit, and who talk. And then they promote these very people to full time positions and head office positions, people who talk a big game and have no teamwork value.

Could go on but I'm tired from being here all day. Work here if you want to be surrounded by constant negativity, discouragement, and dismissal for your personal needs. Wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Company marketing of its values, its training and its positions and the shopfloor reality in the facility I worked in are totally divergent. Supervisors spend a lot of time in safety meetings and walking around asking people to do overtime, but little time is spent making sure trainees have everything required to effectively complete their runs. Diversity and inclusivity are trumpeted but homophobic 'banter' is commonplace and anti gay graffiti is overlooked in staff bathrooms. Crucial information is not passed on to trainees in a timely manner. Selection of suitable people to train new employees is deficient - new trainees may spend their first few days being mentored by people who hate the organisation or clearly lack the flexibility and training to teach another person their job, but are more than happy to share their life stories to a captive audience. One mentor doesn't know what the other mentor has communicated, leading to endless repetition of basic information and ineffective use of time. Mentors may not be familiar with the run they are leading you on and will often tell you to perform basic tasks in a completely different manner to previous mentors. Team leaders seem to not understand how to take an even handed, fair approach to their team but spend lots of time aimlessly talking with favoured employees or raising money, on company time, for their chosen charities. A thoroughly unprofessional organization that should be avoided at all costs. Company spin from head office does not match the reality at all. Coworkers come from all backgrounds, were extremely helpful and patient with new employees, but the people in leadership positions couldn't organise an entertaining evening in a place of ill repute in a shady area in Bangkok. Totally hopeless!

A workplace that is dominated by a hierarchy that like to load the gun & hand it to the person below. The term 'we have been given a directive from above' gets thrown around almost daily. 15 years ago it was a great place where team work flourished. Now be prepared to walk into work on any given day & be told about a whole new restructure, your whole daily routine, shifts, starting times, etc. Yes some people thrive on change but if your not that type of person give it a miss. Indoor work in the delivery center can almost be nervy, not knowing what you'll have thrown at you from minute to minute. Once you get out delivering it's almost a relief to be away from management. Decisions are made by executives etc that just have no knowledge or experience in particular areas they are making huge changes to, money is wasted on ideas that if they had just asked or even better, spent some time with ground roots staff it could have been avoided. In conclusion, the company would love to take the bread out of the bottom dwellers mouth, at the other end of the scale highly paid staff are complicating their own systems to a degree that no one else can do it & they can push their own salaries to ridiculous amounts. Don't ever get injured as you will then be targeted by compensation staff members that have no interest in you actually getting better, they just want to rid you. I'm sorry I wasted 15 years of my life with this company now.

Working with Australia Post was only a four week internship for my Business Internship for my university degree.

On a typical day at work, I come in every morning getting set up and ready to get to work straight away. I have learnt so many things such as finding out what a typical day the Australia Post was in the Human Resource Department. I worked on a project for their current graduate program which involves recommendations for improvement for the 2015 campaign during four weeks being at Australia Post.

I participated in different activities and events with my two managers. Also getting involved in many meetings with different employees from different departments as well as in the Human Resource department. 

An ongoing process was to write down notes when needed on a daily basis whether it would be in a meeting or individually. These notes would help me in order to write my three final reports for the subject. These meetings also involved meeting with my manager about my progress and getting to know everyone as best I can. 

I had great organisational skills when working with Australia Post using my time effectively and efficiently by scheduling on what I was going to do each day during my internship, on which I followed.

In nearing the end of the internship the main outcomes was to complete a competitor analysis, a journal of what was done every day or weeks of the internship, meeting new colleagues and attending meetings. On the very last day of my internship I presented my project findings to the Graduate Program Manager.

I enjoyed every moment of it and met some of the nicest employees there. There were no difficulties what so ever during the internship. The length of the internship and organisation of what the entitled position to bring to the intern was greatly thought out.

I enjoyed my time as an employee here, it was a very fast paced & full on work place. Starting at 0500, collect, sort & arrange customer con notes, followed by a pre-start vehicle inspection.
A short morning brief with other team members & leading hands, the freight would commence running down the sorter system, where drivers would alternate between "picking" freight off the line or sorting freight, confirming with con notes & loading trucks.
Once completed, all freight & con notes MUST be scanned with 100% accuracy, then depart the depot & start delivering the customers goods, while also picking up customer "call ins" ( freight that customers with to forward to other customers around Australia). Once completed, return to the depot, unload all freight that was picked up during the day & fuel up truck, ready to re-commence the next day. The day would conclude at roughly, 1700, Monday to Friday.

To me, most important things learned was speed, accuracy the ability to be a team player both at work with other drivers as well as being able to communicate well with a broad range of customers & people, on an everyday basis.

Management were very strict, kept very tight time schedules & guidelines. They ensured a zero level of tolerance for slacking, inaccuracy, respect, harassment & stupidity. I have no problem with these standards, far from it, I encourage & support them.

Co-workers, generally, were brilliant, a tight knit mob of guys, we always supported each other, as we were professionally, much the same.

Hardest past of the daily routine would be when an interstate truck had broken down or running hours behind schedule & having to leave without all of your alloted freight.

Easily, the most enjoyable part of the working day, job satisfaction together with the mate ship of your co-workers.

In my time at Austpost, I found the structure hierarchical, paying little attention to the backbone of the organisation. 
I worked in 3 teams while there and on the occasions I moved teams, there was no warning or reason for the move. 
To be honest, I didn’t want to move at all.  I wrote to management, who said the decision had been made and that was basically it.  This was not an isolated occurrence, other colleagues were moved at random, where others would stay on the same run for years.  If you were moved, it was to the runs the old timers didn’t want. Often hilly, big runs and too make it worse no visible house numbers, which makes for a very long and taxing day in the middle of summer.    

I liked my team/s, as we all helped each other out when needed.  We had big runs, with a lot of mail.  Often we wouldn't leave the delivery centre until 10:30am and would get back until 5:00pm, that with a 6:30am start.  
The main issue was, with the team leaders and the delivery centre managers.  Most of the team leaders were great, very supportive and helpful. Others not so much, starting as posties at 17 and only becaming team leaders by default and enjoyed using their authority where ever possible.  I’m lucky as I have a Master’s Degree and therefore, had options outside of Austpost.  After my third move was dictated, I decided to go back to planning.  Most of my colleagues didn’t have that option and had to tolerate and accept decisions made for them by management and team leaders. 
Finally, the biggest impact to Austpost is the convert privatisation of the service to private contractor. paid less and worked harder.       


I worked as a casual PSO for 3 years. 

- I was repeatedly denied the opportunity to be made permanent. Those new hires got the permanent roles ahead of me. Example: the daughter in law of a Postal Manager who occasionally is seconded to do relief as a Network Support Officer in Adelaide Northwest Metro. 

- On one occasion I was unwell and nearly fainted after 2 hours standing up. Two days later another relief Network Support Officer told me I was required to obtain a medical report to certify I was fit for work. I went to see my GP and it was concluded that I should have a short 10 min break during a 5 hour shift. Due to the wording of the forms it looked like I could work 2.5 hours of standing without a break. The doctor felt 5 hours was long to be standing up without a break. There was no work nor communication for a week. Finally my boss called me to say she couldn't offer me work as she was not going to adjust the work conditions to suit me. According to her adjustments can be considered only for permanent staff. I was left without work thereon. There is discrimination between casual and permanent staff. 

- During my employment at Post I was requested to work at a shop 35 Kms from my home. I couldn't do this allocation as I needed to pick up my daughter from oshc by 6. 

- Do not waste your time and opportunity on Australia Post. It has a culture of nepotism. Toxic management -management do not give a hoot about rank and file staff. 

- Some postal managers were very helpful and professional. Unfortunately they have no say in who can work at their shop. This is decided by Network Support.

Management have favourites who they will bend the rules for and on the other hand, make life difficult for posties they don't like. Most posties start out loving Australia Post but sadly, bad managers spoil Aus Post's reputation and spark resentment. Hopefully my experience with management does not reflect Aus Post as a company.

There are so many contradictions within the job that make it difficult to know exactly what procedure is sometimes. The main contradiction; speed vs safety. If you concentrate on safety and actually follow every procedure, management will pressure you to go faster. The irony is that safety is completely out the window when you're riding around stressed from all the pressure.
Your back and joints start to ache after bending over all the time, but you don't have time to get off and stretch. You can only go so fast on footpaths yet they somehow want you to zip through the run. The really cruel irony is that they'll punish you either way; for either being unsafe or for being too slow. You really can't win unless you're one of their favourites.

It's going to be interesting how things go when they convert to the push bikes and expect posties to deliver the same volume in the same amount of time.

Other than management, Australia Post is awesome. The people you work with are good folk, and being outdoors is unreal. You get to know the customers as well and everybody seems to be nice to the local postie. It's a shame that the iconic image of the friendly Australian postie is changing to the "no-time-to-say-hello" postie.

The work itself is easy once you get in an do it a few times. Initial training use to be really good but now they are just churning through staff so training is lacking in certain aspects. 

There are plenty of different roles you can play in the contact centre but when you start out in inbound calls with general customers is pretty much like hunger games and every man for them selves. You do get supported through out but huge focus on kpis and aslong as you meet those (forever changing targets) you’ll be left alone. 

You’ll be flipped to different roles and mostly move laterally through the company (as the business needs - management love to say to justify the poor treatment), barely any opportunities to move up job levels and if you do it’s because you’re someone’s friend and a suck up. Not because you’ve know the role and will do well in it. 

There use to be amazing incentives and rewards for meeting your Kpis but now there are none. Maybe a $20 coles gift voucher if you’re the lucky person randomly chosen. 

Work from home options which is a plus but heavily monitored, managers secretly screen watching and conversations on work chat often reviewed under scrutiny. 

There is no transparency from upper management. Sick leave and annual leave is also questioned very hard. 

Pay is low especially when there are no other benefits. 

Use to be an incredible place to work, however with all incentives taken away, rare opportunities for growth, micro managers and no employee loyalty - I would never recommend any one to work for the contact centre again. 

A  normal day consisted of sorting, compiling and sending out mail for delivery. Scan items and complete task sheets. Complete daily safety checks. Deliver Mail. Return tidy up and prepare for following day.
I learnt to estimate and complete deadlines and work with groups of 8-12 people to achieve group outcomes and deadlines. Attention to detail and customer focus was an important aspect of our service.
I enjoyed a great camaraderie with my follow co-workers especially at peak times when we were spending longer hours in the office and working together to achieve high volume deliveries within restricted time frames.
The hardest part of the job was not being able to predict or maintain a regular finish time as this was only determined by the volume of mail arriving that day and the number of staff shortages. The mail had to be cleared every day no matter how long it took. Although it provided a sense of achievement the continuously long hours were hard to deal with.
A great aspect of the job previously was when your work was complete you could often go home early and have time to improve your fitness, health get chores done and find time for relaxation. 
I also enjoyed customer interaction and delivering to the many regular smiling faces that I encountered on my rounds.

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Customer service representative 4 salaries reported	$53,746 per year
Delivery driver 4 salaries reported	$32.34 per hour
Mail carrier 1 salary reported	$69,950 per year
Retail customer service representative 12 salaries reported	$31.07 per hour
Senior software engineer 6 salaries reported	$147,500 per year

Working at Australia Post: Company Overview and Reviews

Australia Post

Australia Post Ratings

Popular jobs at Australia Post

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected