Annual Leave/Resourcing Guidelines

[TrueBlueTerrier]

To: Branches with POSTAL Members

Dear Colleagues,

Annual Leave/Resourcing Guidelines

Further to LTB 617/14 discussions with Royal Mail have continued throughout the summer and into the autumn monitoring the application of the Summer Resourcing document that was cleared with the Postal Executive in April and subsequently circulated to Branches via LTB 217/14. In addition reports were obtained from the Divisions and members of the Integrated Delivery Programme to support the discussions and assist in arriving at an agreement that can support resourcing over the year and not just the summer. Those discussions resulted in the attached Annual Leave/Resourcing Guidelines which were subsequently endorsed by the Postal Executive.

The attached guidelines form part of the work of the Integrated Delivery Programme and the Resourcing to Workload Strand.

Whilst we have previously had plans that have covered the summer period this is the first time that we have agreed a set of national guidelines covering the whole year to cater for periods when workload falls below the agreed model week and also where it exceeds the agreed model week.

Resourcing to workload remains a contentious issue for many of our members and it is hoped that these new guidelines will assist in taking uncertainty and inconsistency out of the system as far as possible.

We do not underestimate the size of the task but we are optimistic that the guidelines will assist our CWU Representatives, and DOMs to arrive at fair and sensible agreements on leave allocation across the year, including reliable alignment of resource to workload. They are designed to provide units with the opportunity for increased availability of leave allocation, particularly but not exclusively during the summer and also provide our members with advanced notification on what leave they have been allocated and when they can take it across the year.

The existing national agreements, guidelines, agreed tools, procedures and processes in place to support resourcing on an ongoing basis are not affected by these annual leave/resourcing guidelines. They remain firmly in place and will in fact be used to support the process and assist in providing a balanced approach to year round leave allocation and resourcing.


Clearly there are things happening around us that we need to respond to, such as the traditional reduction in workload during the summer period, compounded in some areas by the loss of letters to TNT and the loss of parcels to Amazon and other parcel couriers.

The impact of competition and regulation and the threat to our members’ jobs and terms and conditions has exceeded early expectations and reliable leave allocation and resourcing to workload will become more and more prevalent as time goes by.

We need to do things differently in this changing environment, but we must ensure that they remain fair and manageable at all times.

This is not about unexpected and unagreed absorption and/or excessive workload being placed upon our members at short notice.

These guidelines are a genuine attempt to assist the local planning process and focus CWU Representatives and managers’ minds on agreeing an annual leave/resourcing plan, fully utilising the current AWD and reserves, local knowledge and traffic forecasts as a starting point to support an approach that provides an opportunity for local agreements to be put in place with the full involvement of the CWU, where our members know what they are doing from week to week throughout the year.

We accept that traffic forecasting is not 100% reliable and the forecasts should be used as a rough guide to support local plans, and we also accept that there will be units who will not be in a position to create a reliable annual plan until their original revisions are working to plan or until they have concluded any further revision activity.

We also recognise that many Units will already be in the process of, or will have concluded their leave arrangements for 2014-15. The Annual Leave/Resourcing
Guidelines are not intended to interfere in those talks but units may wish to consider their use where it may be more beneficial to do so.

However these guidelines should be seen as a ‘work in progress’ with the aim of producing a final document that reliably deals with all aspects of annual leave/resourcing, from the process to determine the number of leave weeks and reserves, through to using forecast data to create extra leave slots and a menu of resourcing models on how best to align leave reserves/resource to workload throughout the year in time for the 2015-16 annual leave discussions when the intention is for the guidelines to become the standard process.

The ‘work in progress’ will be carried out by reviewing the outputs from the guidelines and using extra data sources that were not available to us at the time of putting the guidelines together. These data sources are the new model week / traffic forecast process and the three monthly model week update for units, which are intended to narrow the level of variance in workload forecasting and provide a sound platform for more accurate, reliable and informed decision making around annual leave/resourcing going forward.

In the meantime it is essential that at local level CWU Representatives and DOMs are working together to remain efficient and competitive and that this is done fairly and with the full involvement of CWU Representatives on a regular and ongoing basis.

The new guidelines form part of that process.

Some pertinent extracts from the guidelines are as follows:
>These guidelines do not affect or change any existing national agreements and all current agreements, guidelines and Joint Statements continue to hold the field.
>To jointly produce and agree a annual leave/ resourcing plan utilising all paid for hours, including overtime, that accurately aligns resource to workload in an efficient and fair and manageable way.
>Annual leave/ resourcing plans will not be based on any predetermined lapsing/absorption plans or budget targets.
>To provide people with advanced notice of what work they will be expected to do on a daily and weekly basis over the forthcoming year and to provide additional annual leave opportunities over the summer period, including opportunities to ‘burn off’ any outstanding or carried over leave.
>To jointly identify genuine opportunities where it will be possible to absorb workload including any travelling time within the scheduled duty time and not take people past their scheduled finish time.
>Weekly resourcing meetings will take place and will review the agreed annual plan and make necessary adjustments to reflect any change in traffic against that forecasted and planned. These meetings will have adequate time afforded for the CWU Representative to actively participate.
>The Fairness, Dignity and Respect guidance should be referred to and put in place where necessary.


The Integrated Delivery Programme Steering Group and the Resourcing to Workload Strand will continue to monitor the deployment and utilisation of these guidelines on an ongoing basis with a formal review in April 2015 and August 2015 in order to refine the guidelines in time for next year’s annual plans.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 230.05
Email address: hnutley@cwu.org

Yours sincerely

Bob Gibson
CWU Assistant Secretary – Outdoor