Dispatches: Post Office Undercover

[TrueBlueTerrier]

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If you want a master class in how not to engage your staff, last night’s Dispatches: Post Office Undercover was it.


The programme sent two reporters to work undercover as posties to find out if the organisation had come good on promises to tackle serious staff problems and modernise its services. The soberly voiced introduction, “Once Royal Mail was your friend, but not anymore,” suggested the findings were not good.

Two previous Dispatches investigations, in 2004 and 2005, had found serious problems with security, poor equipment and staff management. This was Royal Mail’s chance to show how, now ex-chief executive, Adam Crozier’s modernisation had fixed it all, or at least had started to. Sadly, there was plenty of evidence that nothing had changed.

In the two delivery offices the reporters were sent to, in Brixton and Tooting, they found lax security, poorly trained agency workers, damaged and defective equipment and allegations of stealing.

Yet managers dismissed many of the problems. This attitude extended to security issues such as evidence of opened letters, which was ignored, while customers’ complaints about a lack of deliveries were brushed off as “lies”.

Worryingly, the reporters found they were able to access supposedly secure areas with no security checks, a problem that was compounded by some managers’ cavalier attitudes to procedures. At Nine Elms Mail Centre, a magnet for theft allegations, temporary workers were left at the vacant security desk to let in other unchecked workers.

The reporters were also able to offer an insider’s view of the industrial action that took place before Christmas 2009. A supposed truce between workers and management to get the holiday post out was exposed as a sham as posties continued to refuse to deliver all their mail.

That dispute centred on management claims that they needed to modernise, while workers said rounds had been extended to the point where they were unmanageable.

One moment of light relief in the tragic tale came when two posties, hunkered down in their common room when they were supposed to be working, caused a manager to jokingly take a stick and pretend to beat them back to work.

The programme suggested that the problem was a complete disconnection between managers and workers. Managers need to change the organisation but without the co-operation of their staff this will not happen. But neither side seems to appreciate the damage this is doing to the business’s reputation.

A major sticking point in negotiations is that any changes have to be agreed at a national level and then again at local level. Decisions go back and forth like a yo-yo and nothing changes for the better. Dr Madsen Pirie from the Adam Smith Institute said this type of management was “a throwback to an age when organisations were inefficient”.

Dr Richard Hooper, former deputy chairman of Ofcom, who reviewed the organisation in 2008, said it had been at the top of the European distribution league in the 1990s. “But 20 years on it is in the relegation zone,” he added.

This programme didn’t offer any real surprises, especially for people living in south London where the reporters were undercover. But it provided a damning example of the damage that poor industrial relations, combined with endemic worker disengagement at all levels, can cause.

As Hooper put it: “The future of Royal Mail is under threat.”

[fishtank]

"A major sticking point in negotiations is that any changes have to be agreed at a national level and then again at local level. Decisions go back and forth like a yo-yo and nothing changes for the better"



Even they get it.

[Itsa]

All I have had today while out on my round has been "I saw your coleagues on dispatches last night, so thats what you get up to is it"
Well I do not consider them coleagues. For a start they seemed to be mainly agency staff that were the problem (which is no surprise) and secondly this is a management stratergy to convert all of the staff to either very part time (as lttle as 1 hour contracts) or casual labour. They know where this is heading but persist in pushing on with it. There was a time when the only time delivery offices were short of staff was Christmas, not any more they are short staffed every day throughout the year. They can't deny this as they are always complaining about people doing too much overtime, mainly because we are always being asked deliver past our finishing time and even work our rest day because there is no one to cover the round. People going sick in our office is an absolute disaster it means the DOM going out on a round. Tough luck for the DOM

[Big Daz]

The local yo yo bit is unfair


Take longs and shorts if duty content dictates that a needs to say straight 8's then thats allowed otherwise its longs and shorts all the way.

Now who should decide which duties stay at straight 8's and which go to longs and shorts HQ level or local level?

What happens when a DOM and CWU rep dissagree on which days should be shorter and the actual length of attendance on short days. The rep is entitled to register dissagrement and fight for a beteer deal for his or her members.


What happens when a revision is involved such as SDD and Way Forward, are reps meant to agree to everything the DOM puts forward? Of course the are not meant to. Should the rep just agree to the revision detail to be implemented withouta ballot of members of course they bloddy well are not ment to!!!


When that happens outsiders call it local blocking of nationally agreed change, but in reality it is not!!!

[discoinferno]

http://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/pm/ar ... rcover.htm

If you want a master class in how not to engage your staff, last night’s Dispatches: Post Office Undercover was it.


The programme sent two reporters to work undercover as posties to find out if the organisation had come good on promises to tackle serious staff problems and modernise its services. The soberly voiced introduction, “Once Royal Mail was your friend, but not anymore,” suggested the findings were not good.

Two previous Dispatches investigations, in 2004 and 2005, had found serious problems with security, poor equipment and staff management. This was Royal Mail’s chance to show how, now ex-chief executive, Adam Crozier’s modernisation had fixed it all, or at least had started to. Sadly, there was plenty of evidence that nothing had changed.

In the two delivery offices the reporters were sent to, in Brixton and Tooting, they found lax security, poorly trained agency workers, damaged and defective equipment and allegations of stealing.

Yet managers dismissed many of the problems. This attitude extended to security issues such as evidence of opened letters, which was ignored, while customers’ complaints about a lack of deliveries were brushed off as “lies”.

Worryingly, the reporters found they were able to access supposedly secure areas with no security checks, a problem that was compounded by some managers’ cavalier attitudes to procedures. At Nine Elms Mail Centre, a magnet for theft allegations, temporary workers were left at the vacant security desk to let in other unchecked workers.

The reporters were also able to offer an insider’s view of the industrial action that took place before Christmas 2009. A supposed truce between workers and management to get the holiday post out was exposed as a sham as posties continued to refuse to deliver all their mail.

That dispute centred on management claims that they needed to modernise, while workers said rounds had been extended to the point where they were unmanageable.

One moment of light relief in the tragic tale came when two posties, hunkered down in their common room when they were supposed to be working, caused a manager to jokingly take a stick and pretend to beat them back to work.

The programme suggested that the problem was a complete disconnection between managers and workers. Managers need to change the organisation but without the co-operation of their staff this will not happen. But neither side seems to appreciate the damage this is doing to the business’s reputation.

A major sticking point in negotiations is that any changes have to be agreed at a national level and then again at local level. Decisions go back and forth like a yo-yo and nothing changes for the better. Dr Madsen Pirie from the Adam Smith Institute said this type of management was “a throwback to an age when organisations were inefficient”.

Dr Richard Hooper, former deputy chairman of Ofcom, who reviewed the organisation in 2008, said it had been at the top of the European distribution league in the 1990s. “But 20 years on it is in the relegation zone,” he added.

This programme didn’t offer any real surprises, especially for people living in south London where the reporters were undercover. But it provided a damning example of the damage that poor industrial relations, combined with endemic worker disengagement at all levels, can cause.

As Hooper put it: “The future of Royal Mail is under threat.”

As a former postal worker i dont think anyone cannot say that the programme was way off the mark.
During my spell as a postie i worked at vatious DOs on overtime acroos nottingham and i have to say what you saw on C4 was absolutely spot on.

Attitude of managers whom have no management skill,penny pinching ,adverse tatics to scare workers into working for nothing,arguments over delivery times,ignorant drivers,complete lack of training,draconian practices all did nothing but alienate the very staff the Royal Mail employ then wonder why it has all gone tits up .

The royal mail has nobody to blame but its arrogant self for the state it is in look no further than its own doostep and listen to the folks who know the job best and thats the people you employ to do it.

I SAY WELL DONE CHANNEL 4....YOU MADE MY WEEK!!!!!

[heapsy]

We don't have casual staff in our office. We do have longs and shorts, but that's right across the board for everyone, not different duties doing different things on the same day. The local union rep for the managers doesn't like the longs and shorts, he told me so himself, but the dom seems obsessed with it. We often have busy days on short attendance days and cannot cope with the workload. The mail centre, due to THEIR work patterns, sends loads of stuff. ie packets, especially recorded ones, ( I always thought we were not supposed to hold the mail back? ) on the Wednesday, after a short day the day before. This causes problem with trying to complete, due to the extra waiting involved to get stuff signed for etc. To me the answer has to be straight 8 hour days, or whatever fits with your contract if you are P/T. I watched the dispatches program myself. I cannot get my head around why those offices need 4 day weeks whilst my colleagues and I have 5 days with rotating days off. The frames being used were NOT any bigger than ours, and I don't believe this none sense about London being a special case. Get over it, we all do the same job in the same company, for the same pay. Yes I know about the London weighting issue, and I understand the need for that due to higher rent/ mortgage payments. However, I like many of my colleagues live in an expensive suburb of an expensive city, so why don't we get the same payments? If your answer to that is move to a cheaper area, then I could ask exactly the same question. The issue surrounding the management is a national problem. We have good and bad managers around my area of the world. This is part of the greater problems surrounding the way RM is run. The government has a lot to answer for. 20 years ago it should have looked in to the future of RM and set out a proper plan for the future, not just privatisation. If, as we are lead to believe, it is true that mail volumes ARE falling, then a much bigger question needed answering. WHY, when we went to a single delivery, did RM along with the CWU not go to the government and get them to change to a Monday to Friday service? This would have helped to protect the jobs they already had. Instead we now have a situation where part time working is being used, justified by the "falling mail volumes" arguement. There also would have been no need to employ the peeps who now cover the rotating duties. This has only helped RM to force through more and more part time working, in order to balance the books. A proper consultation with ALL staff involved would have allowed RM to sit down with the CWU and plan the future of the company. It would also have helped shape the company with duties being tailored to peoples duties, ie bigger duty for a full timer etc. The CWU also has a lot to answer for in that respect.