The rate of absenteeism at Canada Post is higher than that at other companies. I believe that the success of the company in the future depends upon all of our people being engaged in that success and all of our people understanding, better than they do today, how the competitive landscape has changed and what the customers are expecting of our company. We have a major strategic initiative under way in the company to bring the customer closer to the shop floor, to bring the ideas and the opportunities that our customers have about providing postal services in a different way, and to help our people understand that there are big changes happening in the landscape.
Besides this, we have retained medical experts to help us understand why a particular problem in one region requires a certain level of absence but in another region seems to require a much higher level of absence from work. We're trying to understand more completely than we do today why that is, so as a company we are retaining more expertise than we've had in-company to do that.
There is a third thing that I think will help. Employee engagement is all about everybody feeling connected to the whole company and feeling that the task they do actually has a relationship to the overall goals of the company. We have instituted a new training program for our supervisors. We have 3,000 supervisors across the country. Their ability to communicate customer expectations to our people on the night shift, on the evening shift, in the plants, and in the depots, and to help our people feel attached to the overall success of the company is a critical part.
So I think all of these steps need to be taken together: getting more expertise on the shop floor and in the letter carrier depots; training our supervisors; and helping our supervisors become better leaders, so they can lead our people in their understanding of the competitive landscape. And I think, as I mentioned earlier, a portion of the corporate team incentive this year will go to employee engagement, which includes a reduction in absenteeism.