P&L 1 year on.

[fishtank]

The smaller the loops, the less inefficiency.

I'm not convinced that applies beyond an optimum time of around 40 minutes..
Waiting for 1 minute 20 times is not more efficient than waiting for 2 minutes 10 times and then you have to factor in more vehicle movement and setting up and packing away the trolleys.

I disagree with fishtank that inefficiency is doubled.

one person's foibles, errors, stumbles, hurdles, obstacles, attendance calls, have a direct effect on the other person.

That's kind of what i meant by doubled.
Apologies if i wasn't clear.

[eastie]

I find it worse on heavy days, my driver with the smaller loop (5 mins quicker by Georoute) might have lots of signed fors and me none on my loop.
What happens, the one with the supposed longer round has to wait for the driver .
Problem is that a lot of p/l rounds have problems because the driver and walker loops dont actually loop back to one point ie. the van, due to the geography of walks and even if a walker pranks the driver for the next trolleyload the driver is nowhere near the van sometimes meaning waiting for the walker.
Yes it would work if the drivers loop was always 40 minutes and the walkers was always 45 minutes every loop but it will never be like that

[bag69]

I know, we have walks where every drivers loop is longer than the foot one, explain that. Yes there is loads of time lost due to waiting around for your partner. A lot of the time you end up with 2 people in the van doing parcels. Again more wasted time. Also been told today that if you work your day off on Mon/Tues your payment will be traffic based. Weds/Thurs/Fri you will be expected to go over on the swings and rounabouts. Sat, no one wants the OT due to the late finish. Making a rod for their own back i would say. Not going to work my day off anymore for them. When the usual pressure arrives my answer will also be no, as i will of got used to my day off. See where this is going RM. They also announced that if someone goes sick Mon/Tues then that walk or walks will be lapsed !!! Swings & roundabouts eh. Shame i wont get on the seesaw to play with you.

[Lincox]

So if you are not likely to be able to complete on a Wednesday, and lino says swings and roundabouts, is this not misuse of the variation of hours agreement. First you must be asked if you will flex by 30mins and you have the right to refuse for personal reasons. What happens if you do flex and then on the Thursday and Friday the traffic is as bad. Is he going to let you play on the roundabout?

[Postie45]

A lot of the problems that have come about is partly our own fault, but mainly RMs. I`m sure most of us, when there was job and finish, used to rush around and get the job done, which worked for both ourselves and RM. What appears to have happened is RM has looked at peoples finishing times and decided to add on work calculating that people would work at the same average speed that we were working at before. This previous faster working speed came with the incentive of finishing early and the postmans knowledge that the amount of work was manageable at the faster work speed (ie if you know your duty will take 3 hours you know you can work at a faster speed than if you know it will take 4 hours where you will have to conserve energy and work at a slower overall pace).
Now we have extended deliveries and no incentive to work faster than at a fair pace, most of us are working a lot slower due to these 2 reasons, RM has done a terrible job of foreseeing these problems which were quite obvious to most of us before the changes.

[Budfrog]

What appears to have happened is RM has looked at peoples finishing times.

Erm ... how would RM actually know what the actual finishing times were ?

If they had wanted to do the job properly RM would have created a databank of their own Standard Minute Values (or PVs) for delivery work but of course this would have taken time and trained resource to achieve ... reminds me a little of the tortoise and the hare ;)

[Postie45]

I just mean people finishing early in general, the average in my office was probably an hour early everyday at least, dont know about other offices but I get the feeling that most offices used to be similar.