Model Week Guidance version 2

[TrueBlueTerrier]

To: Branches with POSTAL Members

Dear Colleague,

Model Week Guidance version 2

Branches and CWU Representatives will be aware that the previous Model Week guidance was set on historic traffic information which determined the baseline workload on which to build a revision. In recent years this has become less reliable and to a certain extent irrelevant in many cases due to the changes in traffic volume during the time the revision was being planned, agreed and deployed. In a significant number of cases the revision was out of date on the day it was introduced and in some cases with the impact of direct delivery competition this scenario has been exacerbated.

As a result of this we have agreed that a model week can no longer be reliably determined based purely on the past as this does not reasonably reflect the impact on traffic/workload or the commercial changes now being experienced in many delivery offices.

This new approach to determining the Model Week for a delivery office prior to a revision is designed to improve the reliability of the duty structure, alignment of resource to workload and in turn the delivery performance of the office and the competitive position of Royal Mail going forward in what is now a highly competitive market.

Also by taking week 14 as the Model Week it introduces a standard approach in all units. This does not mean that week 14 is the same in all units, as week 14 is determined locally taking local traffic/workload into consideration.

In addition as from January 2015 the model week will be recalculated centrally and updated every 3 months so that any traffic/workload variations are being tracked, enabling any necessary adjustments to be made on an ongoing basis via weekly resourcing meetings. This falls in line with the auto IWT which is also populated centrally based on ongoing traffic figures for the office.

We have also had to add in a process for dealing with sudden traffic loss due to the introduction of direct delivery from TNT and/or Amazon which previously did not exist at the time of the original guidelines, or at least not to the extent now being experienced in some parts of the Country.

The updated Guidelines provide a revised approach to the Model Week and should ensure that we have a more realistic and reliable level of resourcing in delivery offices going forward. The revised and updated Model Week guidelines are also an integral part of the revision process and without it we do not have a baseline to build a revision upon.

The revised Model Week Guidelines form part of the ‘just in time’ training package that has been jointly developed, which is currently being finalised. Branches and CWU Representatives are reminded that this training forms an integral part of the new Revision Guidelines including the approach to revisions and has to be delivered at the appropriate stage of the revision process to enable the revision to progress any further.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 230.03
Email address: hnutley@cwu.org or mstewart@cwu.org


Yours sincerely

Bob Gibson
CWU Assistant Secretary – Outdoor