Postal Digital Assistant PDA – Service View

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Letter to Branches






To: Branches with POSTAL Members

Dear Colleagues,

Postal Digital Assistant PDA – Service View

Further to the update given by Bob Gibson, CWU Assistant Secretary, at CWU’s Annual Conference last week, intensive discussions with Royal Mail have continued in trying to reach an agreed Joint Statement covering the use of PDAs (Service View) in the 20 Delivery Units visited as part of the National Delivery Review.

Those discussions have produced a national Joint Statement which has been endorsed by the Postal Executive today.

Royal Mail has been very keen to introduce this ‘service view’ and we can see that there are positive implications for the business and clearly opportunities to improve the overall service to customers and counter the services being offered by competition, in addition its use and how this could be used to improve first time delivery, improve delivery routes and generally improve the service, such as by offering customers notification of delivery times. However there are also negative implications from our point of view, such as the constant tracking of our members on delivery and the potential for this to be used for disciplinary/capability purposes and also route planning and allocation of time to do the job, whereby Royal Mail would simply refer to the service view as the time required for the delivery route regardless of how it was completed and the Joint Statement covers this element off.

The switching on of the service view in the 20 Delivery Offices will provide us with a useful platform to better understand the delivery operation and deal with the key elements of the IDP going forward and this will be reviewed primarily under the auspices of the Resourcing to Workload Strand but it will also remain under review over the wider programme and the overall steering group.

There are clearly positive aspects to the technology, how we might use PDAs to help us increase first time delivery success, but we need to ensure that it remains focused on the positive and not the negative.

In summary

This is not about catching people out or using the technology in an inappropriate way for disciplinary or capability purposes.

As a part of the National Delivery Review we have initially enabled access to the information the PDAs provide in the 20 delivery units jointly visited. This means that we will begin to collect the data produced by the PDAs in those offices on a daily basis and use new software called “Service View” to help us understand what this can tell us, and identify the potential of the PDA technology.

Identify the correct use of delivery equipment and compliance with methods.

Identify first time delivery success rate and variability.

Identify consistency of route taken versus planned route.

The data collected will be managed through the “Service View” software system and managers and CWU Representatives will be trained to use it.

Individuals will also be able to view their own individual data if they wish to do so.

Any jointly identified improvements to delivery routes arising from PDA data will be discussed between the DOM and CWU rep in line with existing national agreements.

Attached to the LTB is the agreed national Joint Statement.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 540/230.05
Email address: hnutley@cwu.org

Yours sincerely




Mark Baulch
CWU Acting Assistant Secretary – Outdoor

[Glenno]

To me this is gonna be the next revolution, watch this space