Covering indoor work and covering delivery are two completely different things.
If by cutting/tipping, prepping and working on IPS they are creating an illusion of excess indoor hours, which they are then using to justify lapsing , then they aren't "helping".
I understand the reasons behind the recruitment freeze.
Glasgow Mail Centre has/will have approximately 20 spare bodies after changes to their workplan and the Glasgow area has 22 vacancies, (but rumour has it that no DOM wants them because they fear they won't be able to cope with a delivery.)
That's why they have to cover delivery - because we don't have enough bodies on the ground.
But if an office has 5 vacancies and those 5 vacancies are filled with bag carriers, then that isn't going to affect the available indoor hours. (In fact filling the vacancies will just decrease the earning potential of people who like to work their day off) So if managers still need to do OPG work it means that somewhere their figures are wrong - either because the mail is not being properly counted ( and here we go back to why the Mail Centre figures are so wildly inaccurate) or (as in Glasgow's case) because we are still using the Capacity Plan which is a crock of shite that doesn't accurately reflect all the indoor work.
And if managers are doing OPG work they are giving the unit a false EP - and then what happens if the manager goes sick and is replaced by a manger who rightly doesn't want to do OPG work.
The societies of consumption and squandering of material resources are incompatible with the idea of economic growth and a clean planet.