LTB 517/14 Customer Experience - Sunday Working

[TrueBlueTerrier]

No: 517/14
Ref: 401
Date: 13th August 2014

TO: ALL BRANCHES WITH POSTAL MEMBERS

Dear Colleague

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE - SUNDAY WORKING


I would like to advise Branches and particularly members working in Customer Experience (CE) that national discussions have been taking place regarding CE support for Mails operations during the forthcoming trial of Sunday Services which will commence on 7th September.

As a consequence of the Sunday Services initiative, customers will require assistance on a Sunday, and we have therefore agreed with Royal Mail that an appropriate number of volunteers will work on a Sunday from 9am - 2pm. The volunteers will operate on a fair rota basis where there is an over-subscription from the following sites: Bangor, Dearne, Doxford, Glasgow, Plymouth and Stoke.

We support this development and would encourage all members who are interested in working on a Sunday and benefiting from the associated arrangements to volunteer to do so. I would like to reassure members that nobody is compelled to work on a Sunday as this activity is purely voluntary.

A Joint Statement detailing resourcing arrangements and remuneration for those members volunteering is attached to this LTB for your information.
Please direct any enquiries to lsheridan@cwu.org

Yours sincerely
Andy Furey
Assistant Secretary

[TrueBlueTerrier]

13 August 2014

Dear colleague

Providing a Sunday Service for our Customers

Introduction

Royal Mail is introducing a new Sunday service to make it easier for shoppers to receive their parcels. RM will pilot Sunday afternoon opening at around 100 of our delivery offices across the UK later this summer. Delivery offices with the highest parcels volumes across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will take part in the initiative. We will also trial Sunday parcel deliveries to addresses within the M25 motorway.

Following discussions between Customer Experience and CWU it has been agreed to trial a telephone service for our customers on Sundays. We plan to implement this change from Sunday 7th September 2014.

Customer Experience plans to trial the following approach:

Sunday Plan

Open the main Consumer helpline numbers between 9am – 2pm
The Sunday service will be operated from a mix of Doxford, Plymouth, Dearne, Stoke, Bangor & Glasgow sites depending on available resource
The principle of sharing the opportunity for performing Sunday duties on a fair basis will apply with an agreed rota process introduced should the number of volunteers exceed the resource requirement.
Local resourcing will focus on permanent employees and will be agreed between Customer Experience and CWU.
All of the options below are applicable to permanent FT and PT employees on an equal basis.
Agency staff will only be involved in this trial in the absence of enough volunteers from permanent employees.

Permanent employees who volunteer to work on a Sunday as part of this trial will, at their discretion have three options to choose from to compensate for the hours they perform on a Sunday:

Option A – Existing Sunday Scheduled Attendance rates paid for the time worked. The same rate is applicable to both FT and PT employees

Option B – The hours of attendance will be multiplied by 1.5 ( 60 minutes equals a 90 minute credit ) to give a total for the day which can be accrued on an on-going basis and taken as additional annual leave in line with local leave arrangements.
Option C – The hours of attendance will be multiplied by 1.5 ( 60 minutes equals a 90 minute credit ) to give a total for the day which can then be used to form part of the normal weekly attendance with the residual hours scheduled over no more than 4 days.
In order to fully understand the effectiveness of the trial and customer demand on a Sunday, we will jointly review the trial on a monthly basis.

Customer Experience and the CWU would encourage employees to support this important initiative that is designed to provide a better service to our customers.



Jon Abrahams Andy Furey
Service Operations Assistant Secretary
Multichannel Customer Experience Communication Workers Union