Wednesday 26 May 2021 6:00 am | Updated: Tuesday 25 May 2021 5:33 pm

Sub-postmaster saga batters Post Office recruitment chances

Postal workers have finally had their names cleared of theft.

On April 23, judges quashed the convictions of 39 Post Office workers who were wrongfully convicted of stealing money thanks to a flaw in the Horizon IT system. Described as “the UK’s most widespread miscarriage of carriage”, the long-running saga put an ordinarily uncontroversial institution at the centre of a media firestorm. The business has now announced it is making efforts to identify other affected sub-postmasters.

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Data from YouGov BrandIndex shows that these recent headlines have impacted public perceptions – but may also demonstrate how a fiasco can affect the ability of companies to recruit. Buzz scores for the Post Office, which calculate whether people have heard more good or bad news about a company in the past fortnight, went from solidly positive (8.4) to emphatically negative (-9.2) between April 22 – the day before the sub-postmasters’ convictions were overturned – and April 29: a drop of 17.6 points over a week. Scores are still negative as of May 22 (-1.4).

With Impression scores falling from 49.9 to 33.7 (-16.2) over the same period, more people take a dim view of the Post Office than they did before. One month later, these scores have not yet recovered – they remain at 34.9.

The story has even affected opinions of the Post Office’s overall service. In the week of April 22 – 29, Quality scores plummeted from 40.5 to 30.0 (-10.5) and have remained at similar levels since (May 22: 29.2). Recommend scores also took a knock, falling from 38.5 to 26.8 (April 22 – May 22; -11.7).

Perhaps unsurprisingly, willingness to work at an organisation that wrongly accused employees of crimes – and recently awarded a £42.5m contract extension to the company that designed (and will continue to maintain) the Horizon system – may have deteriorated.

The Post Office’s Reputation metric, which tracks whether consumers would be proud or embarrassed to work for a particular company, saw a fall of 11.4 points between April 22 (29.7) and April 29 (18.3). As of May 22, scores have seen only modest recovery (22.3). After the current PR crisis – and the potential identification of more victims – is over, the story may well linger in the minds of would-be applicants.