Moya Greene sees challenge in Royal Mail posting

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It probably wasn't the way Moya Greene wanted to close out her tenure as chief executive officer of Canada Post Corp.

During a tour of the post office's new $100-million plant in Winnipeg a couple of weeks ago, Ms. Greene twisted her ankle, damaging some ligaments. When company chairman Marc Courtois joked that the plant had barely started operating and it already had a workplace injury, Ms. Greene quipped that no one had accounted "for the stupidity of the CEO."

Ms. Greene hasn't had many missteps during her five years at the helm of Canada Post. The Crown corporation has generated regular annual profits, cut costs by more than $500-million and modernized much of its operations.

Now Ms. Greene is off to London to become chief executive officer in July of the Royal Mail, a job she acknowledges will be "daunting."

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In many ways the British postal service, which traces its roots back to 1516, is a mirror image of Canada Post. It's in a financial bind because of falling mail volumes and a pension shortfall expected to top $15-billion this year. It has a long history of bitter relations with its unions, who launched a series of national strikes last year. This week, the chief financial officer quit and the newly elected government of David Cameron announced plans to privatize the service.

"It is daunting of course because these are large complex organizations," Ms. Greene said in an interview Thursday. "But it helps to have had the five years of experience that I have had … I come from Newfoundland and there is a whole traditional approach to many things. But you have to change and you have to help people change."

Ms. Greene, 56, said post offices everywhere are facing similar challenges: increased competition, declining revenue and outdated equipment. She cited her daughter who recently graduated from university as an example of the changing landscape. Her daughter applied to college online, pays her bills online and completed her taxes online. "She did not send a single letter home from university in four years," Ms. Greene said. "She doesn't even like to use e-mail any more. She's a text girl."

The changing times require post offices to constantly modernize, she said. Canada Post is going through a $2-billion upgrade to its facilities and it is about to raise $1-billion through its first ever bond offering. Ms. Greene said Canadians should review the postal system every five years and consider how much service they want and how much they want to pay.

As for the Royal Mail, she welcomes the government's plans to privatize some or all of the service. "I think they realize that they have to give the Royal Mail the tools that it needs to stay successful," she said.

Union leaders in Britain are staunchly opposed to privatization and Ms. Greene said she will listen to their concerns. "It is true that for some people in the labour movement, private capital is a bogeyman. But I don't that that's true for most people," she said. "I think privatization has sort of become a word that is fearsome, and I have to say I don't really understand that."

Despite the bleak outlook for letter writing, Ms. Greene is bullish on post offices. The future lies in e-post, she said, a super-secure electronic mail service that doesn't travel over the Internet. Canada Post has already delved into the business and has about 1.8 million subscribers. Ms. Greene sees a future "where every Canadian household has a mailbox outside their door to get the newspaper and inside their home they have an electronic box called e-post."

She acknowledged postal services will be smaller, employ fewer people and likely be privately owned. "I don't think the issue is as much are you a private sector company or are you government-owned?" she said. "I really think the issue is, are you successful?"