Transparency of 'traffic' and the 'model day'

[thegreatestfreddy]

Dear All,

Firstly can i say that i am a delivery postman of some 15 years and am in 100% support of the CDV SDD delivery method and agree with Sir Richard Hooper that we are "perfectly poised as a business to take advantage of the internet shopping revolution" and have made the right decisions to modernise in this way and to seek more D2D work to preserve jobs with the loss of traditional letter mail falling as it has over recent years.

I cannot though understand why day after day i see and hear stories of bullying and harrassment by managers determined to argue that deliveries can be completed in far less time than is often actually possible... things can and do go wrong in the 'real world' and should not be seen as an opportunity to create conflict through denial of such facts and also more frustratingly through some bizarre belief that no matter how much mail is on hand on a particular day for delivery, without fail it can be delivered within the geo-route calculated time for that delivery....

the problem is two fold in my opinion... firstly royal mail managers seem to be of a mentality that views 'efficiency' as a straight line graph... ie the more mail we have to deliver on a particular day the more efficent we will be... in reality of course this graph is 'bell shaped' ie.. you reach a level of maximum efficiency at which point you then become less efficient... this can be down to many factors.. overloading, increased double handling, more prone to errors, fatigue etc....
the second thing is royal mail managers seem to forget that the geo-route calculations are based on a 'model day' which has parameters such as traffic levels, callrate and the number of attended calls(items requiring a signature).... the whole thing is dynamic and is not a finite fact that all deliveries will be completed within the allocated time yet we see this denial and lack of transparency everyday....

the company has the telemetry in place to be able to evaluate daily the workload for each delivery yet chooses to deny us this accuarate information preferring instead to refuse to pay overtime for work done beyond the 'model day' and to harrass and create conflict within the workplace and erode what little is left of any industrial relations... and certainly in our large DO (some 150+ deliveries) seem to be actively encouraging junior managers to adopt this kind of attitude and not attempt to recognise, or keep hidden, actual workloads.

i personally am getting really sick of seeing and hearing of this denial day in and day out and will be writing very strongly to Moya Greene to ask for an explanation of these tactics and i think she should be threatened with some kind of disclosure to an outside organisation of these tactics which i would suspect be found to be rife within her business... unless of course i am wrong and this is something which is unique only to my own office....????!!

[stupidboy]

i'm sure this happens in every office. a few weeks back our office, DOM included, physically counted items that arrived. when this was reported back to DOM's bosses they rejected the figures.
we've no chance of ever getting accurate figures into any office when the business is geared towards giving personal bonuses to the suits for cutting costs.

[DirtyHarry]

Royal Mail has got to get off their blasted cost-cutting merry-go-around.
For nigh on 12 years now, this bloody company has taken penny-pinching to levels Ebeneezer Scrooge would have been proud of.
We are at the bare bones now, and alarmingly our senior management shows very little sign of having an attack of common sense.

[Hitcher]

Great post!

And it's definitely not just your office - only today they called all the FT's up for an extra 30 minutes IPS and later when they said they wouldn't be able to complete they were told 'There's exactly the same amount of mail as other weeks and if it wasn't done then it's a performance issue'.

[WHITEANT]

Ive been a postie 30+ yrs and i have never believed PO about this massive fall in volumes of mail that they are always feeding us .Yes there has been a fall in personal mail but junk mail has increased ,along with packets ,tracked items,registers ,d2d.So u r still going to the same amount of calls but instead of 8 ltrs u have 5 but now u have to knock more doors ,write more notice lefts, break away from delivery more often (because later starts )with registers .Having to wear your seat belt all the time ,putting all your mail in back of van etc adds time to your delivery .But ive seen so many times POSTMEN ruin the jobs ,by coming in early,not taking there breaks,literally going round the delivery on two wheels ,breaking every h/s rule in the book and u know what managment turn a blind eye to it all .Then after a period of time they push more onto you because your finishing 1hr early .No wonder DO are chuckling under there breaths because posties cut there own throats .

[oypostie]

Royal Mail has got to get off their blasted cost-cutting merry-go-around.
For nigh on 12 years now, this bloody company has taken penny-pinching to levels Ebeneezer Scrooge would have been proud of.
We are at the bare bones now, and alarmingly our senior management shows very little sign of having an attack of common sense

Meanwhile they waste a fortune on World Class Mail, RMTV etc......

[Indy]

'There's exactly the same amount of mail as other weeks and if it wasn't done then it's a performance issue'.

WHS!

[Indy]

Ive been a postie 30+ yrs and i have never believed PO about this massive fall in volumes of mail that they are always feeding us

Oddly RM never EVER speak about the savings/cuts they've made to compensate for these so called falling volumes. We've lost duty after duty, nights gone, Overtime/extended over the past 2 years? running at virtually nothing, lapsing etc etc

[Glenno]

thegreatestfreddy a very good post Freddie, something that has been smouldering around for years, recently there has been an upsurge in our Area with Managers contesting the figures, as they now have to do a daily report with figures received and actual figures received etc ( micro management ) was tasked to do a count by the DOM, he picked the tray, average count per tray was supposed to be 204, the actual tray consisted of 430, I kid you NOT

[WHITEANT]

Il kid u not ,my line manager says an average box is 150 ,i told him what a load of cobblers .He said even if a box has only 10 in it they would count as 150 and overall it would balance it self of .So for quite a while i have been counting my mail .If i get just say 3 boxes of sequence mail it should be 450 ,yes you guessed it , it was 960 so times that diffrence by the postmen there is and u have a big diffrence

[thegreatestfreddy]

Thanks for your comments and support on this post.....

i would like to hear a little more though.... there are certain managers at our place where if you tell them you were over by 20-30 mins their instant reaction is "you shouldn't be going over" or "on a day like yesterday".... then a lot of the time refusing/not paying overtime properly.

you ask them what the traffic was and they "don't know".... you ask them what the 'model day' traffic is for MTWTFS and they "don't know"....
our duty contents are based on these very figures...!!!...

all i am saying is we have a right to see and know these figures every day to stop this constant barrage of us "being inefficient ".... lets have some transparency and see the facts...!!

[mailmonkey]

Thanks for your comments and support on this post.....

i would like to hear a little more though.... there are certain managers at our place where if you tell them you were over by 20-30 mins their instant reaction is "you shouldn't be going over" or "on a day like yesterday".... then a lot of the time refusing/not paying overtime properly.

you ask them what the traffic was and they "don't know".... you ask them what the 'model day' traffic is for MTWTFS and they "don't know"....
our duty contents are based on these very figures...!!!...

all i am saying is we have a right to see and know these figures every day to stop this constant barrage of us "being inefficient ".... lets have some transparency and see the facts...!!

Same at ours, people ARE being paid extended (with a struggle) if they need to go over , but tell them you need to break off and you get intimidation, threats, and abuse.

ANY day where traffic is higher than the model week (any day with more than 3 packets basically ;) ) there should be no need to explain why you won't finish.

[fishtank]

all i am saying is we have a right to see and know these figures every day to stop this constant barrage of us "being inefficient ".... lets have some transparency and see the facts...!!

You have a right not to be accused of inefficiency using unagreed measurements like "traffic" and "model weeks" and the "IWT".
Those are office resourcing tools and measures not individual performance criteria.
If management are quoting them in an attempt to deny overtime or force members to work over contact your rep,then your area rep and branch then HQ.
There is no need for members to get involved with any of these tools.

[BELIAL]

Thanks for your comments and support on this post.....

i would like to hear a little more though.... there are certain managers at our place where if you tell them you were over by 20-30 mins their instant reaction is "you shouldn't be going over" or "on a day like yesterday".... then a lot of the time refusing/not paying overtime properly.

Then don't go over, and cut off. Best to be cautious and cut your cloth to fit

[thegreatestfreddy]

Spoke to one 'junior' manager yesterday....

he reckons that the ammounts of workload are going to change.... traffic, knocks, calls etc...

i said.... "what, do you mean they are going to be revised down to make the duties more achievable then...?? "....

guess what he said.... "No, they are going to be increased to make us more efficient... " .....

unbelievable....