Michael

My name is Michael Fern. I am one of the STEP 2009 entrants. At the moment the project I am working on is the South Midlands Mail Centre Project and I am the HR Migrations Manager for that.

My passion and interest was in Business Transformation. So I saw the STEP programme and that’s what got me here really.

What attracted me most was actually the looseness of it. Business transformation is something that had always been an area I wanted to look at as part of my MBA and it seemed quite open, quite flexible in that there was an opportunity to go in, learn some new skills, use your skills and background and deliver, but create your own ways and to an extent create your own destiny and the looseness of all that appealed to me.

The assignment that I am working on at the moment is within the South Midlands Mail Centre project, which is a £70 million capital investment as part of the major mail centre rationalisation programme.

I have to make sure the right people get in to the right jobs. I’ve got to manage industrial relationships framework as we go through, and that can be challenging at times, but conversely we’ve had some really good, positive effects.

This is Jubilee Mail Centre. In simple terms this is the processing area. These hubs are absolutely critical. Behind me is a LSM – Letter Sorting Machine. We have got the next generation of LSMs in place. We have also got what are called Walk Sequencing Machines where the mail is taken through in batches and actually sequenced down to the walks that the post men and women are doing and even in some cases given to them in the order they will be delivering the letters and that’s the way that the technology is taking us and that’s where the business is focusing on.

We are modernising and taking the business forward and being part of that for me is exciting – it’s challenging at times but it’s incredibly exciting.

The projects are wide and varied but the organisation is huge, it is UK-wide, you have to be prepared to spend time away from home. My project is a great example.

The benefit for me is just to be highly motivated. I really am and I’ve had a number of jobs over the years and I go home, I can have bad weeks but I can’t wait to get back to work the next day. It’s kept me motivated, it’s kept me excited, it’s given me challenges, it’s made me want to rip my hair out at times and I’ve loved every minute of it.