being coached

[Dorset Plodder]

We all make mistakes. "The Man Who Never Made a Mistake Never Made Anything"! A Good Friend of mine had a theory: If you have 500 Delivery points and you miss deliver to 5 addresses that's a 99% efficiency rate. Any other company would be very happy with a 99% efficiency rate!

Bearing in mind most addresses have more than one piece of mail (and a miss sort is often mixed in with the "Correct" mail, as we often check No58..No58...No58, missing out the road) the percentage is probably higher than 99%!

[bustedflush]

Will they use the twttp and herca forms on me, they have on others but what are they cheers

The TWTTP (The way to teach people) ... HERCA (Human Error Root Cause Analysis). I doubt its anything that official or scientific, but yes in its most basic form they will use some version of both these approaches.

Oh, the acronyms are flowing today...!

So the OP can be rest assured he'll receive no S.H.I.T. (Special High-Intensity Training)?

[holly123]

Thanks all

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Will they use the twttp and herca forms on me, they have on others but what are they cheers

The TWTTP (The way to teach people) ... HERCA (Human Error Root Cause Analysis). I doubt its anything that official or scientific, but yes in its most basic form they will use some version of both these approaches.

Oh, the acronyms are flowing today...!

So the OP can be rest assured he'll receive no S.H.I.T. (Special High-Intensity Training)?

No but hopefully they'll give CRAP - Cognitive Realignment of Attitude Placement to any bullying managers.

[bustedflush]

Ok with the advent of the replacement PDA program we won't mention the Coaching in Utilization of New Technology.

[Cedar_Room]

A year or so ago a load of tracked items were flagged on my delivery as not having the doorstep scan,when I looked at the dates I realised they all happened when I was on Leave & my duty had been on overtime for the duration of my holiday.

I told my manager this but to no avail,I still had to sit down with one of the workplace coaches & go through the motions of using the PDA,scanning the packet etc.

The irony is that the fella that was seeing if I had half a clue what I was doing was one of the people picking up my walk on docket in my absence & I'd bet a decent sum was the culprit for the reported misdemeanours!

[Trawler127]

Did you get the union involved Cedar_Room?

[Chasdad]

I'm a new postman just threatened with counselling for a failed tracked item and im sure it was down to the PDA (which by the way I never received any on the job training for) but they did let it go. I also admitted a misdelivery where I put ten letters through a door covering about 4 or 5 addresses and then looked at the ten items I had in my hand which were actually for that address. Then obviously had to put those through as well. Again it was let go (maybe as it was my first week and had been left to do the last two loops on my own as my colleague needed to cut off). Making mistakes makes you more aware but I'm shocked that you can get done for this when it must happen all the time. I've been out for more than six hours on one occasion and we all know you feel pretty bad well before the end of that. How is it NOT going to happen?

Ps I have had a total of about 5 minutes so called coaching. People will point you in the right direction if they've got the time. Colleagues are generally more than fine. No one else gives a toss......Never worked anywhere like it.

[Newbie001]

I'm a new postman just threatened with counselling for a failed tracked item and im sure it was down to the PDA (which by the way I never received any on the job training for) but they did let it go. I also admitted a misdelivery where I put ten letters through a door covering about 4 or 5 addresses and then looked at the ten items I had in my hand which were actually for that address. Then obviously had to put those through as well. Again it was let go (maybe as it was my first week and had been left to do the last two loops on my own as my colleague needed to cut off). Making mistakes makes you more aware but I'm shocked that you can get done for this when it must happen all the time. I've been out for more than six hours on one occasion and we all know you feel pretty bad well before the end of that. How is it NOT going to happen?

Ps I have had a total of about 5 minutes so called coaching. People will point you in the right direction if they've got the time. Colleagues are generally more than fine. No one else gives a toss......Never worked anywhere like it.

I would suggest don't worry too much. As you see in the other thread about Managers getting worse, this is all about keeping you in line. Sometimes they'll threaten coaching other times willful delay and suspension blah blah blah! In the meantime you'll feel pressure to come in early and rush around without breaks. It's basic manager training/bullying for all new staff.
Welcome to Royal Mail

[Chasdad]

Cheers for that Newbie

[Chasdad]

We all make mistakes. "The Man Who Never Made a Mistake Never Made Anything"! A Good Friend of mine had a theory: If you have 500 Delivery points and you miss deliver to 5 addresses that's a 99% efficiency rate. Any other company would be very happy with a 99% efficiency rate!

Bearing in mind most addresses have more than one piece of mail (and a miss sort is often mixed in with the "Correct" mail, as we often check No58..No58...No58, missing out the road) the percentage is probably higher than 99%!

Totally agree. Funny yesterday had someone rush out with a misdelivered letter telling me he has sight problems and even he could see it was the wrong road (but the right number). Pointed out politely that we don't read the address on each mail item but flick through to ensure the right numbers are together 'in the interests of actually getting the mail delivered'. But, he said, 'it might be something important'. Obviously what I would have liked to say at that point was that he should express his views to senior management about quality of delivery suffering due to their decisions on how rounds are put together and the consequent time and workload pressures on post persons. But I was in too much of a hurry.......

[answer=42]

The first thing should be counselling - to make you aware there has been a complaint and to see of there are/were any problems.
Only if there is a repeat offence should the coaching become necessary.
There might be problems with the frame - if the mail for 265A is being delivered to 265 because 265A isn't on the frame for example.
There might be a question of fatigue - is the meal relief being taken? Are measures being taken to avoid dehydration etc?

It makes perfect sense for a business to try and eliminate mistakes quite simply because mistakes cost money.

MH has got it spot on. The essence of the new workplace coach system is to get to the root cause of a problem. Misdelivery is a problem, it's the most common cause of complaints about the service and costs the business a lot of money. If there was a way of reducing the incidents of misdelivery we could save some of that money. You can't find out why problems happen in individual circumstances and try to put them right unless you investigate the reasons.
This is part of what workplace coaches are supposed to be doing. Instead of being grilled by a manager threatening conduct and finger pointing colleagues are supposed to be 'interviewed' in an open, honest and transparent way by a fellow colleague trained to follow a set procedure (The WTTP form is designed to find out WHY the problem occured and lead to measures we can take to try and avoid it happening again if possible). If it's a problem on the frame it can be sorted out. How many us have seen streets with similar names, Willard Close, Willard Place, Willard Street and Willard Avenue for example close together on the frame and on the ground and getting mixed up every other day with similar numbers running together 6,4,2,on one street running into 2,4,6,on the next and no number on one of the number 4's? Rather than just bollock the postie and threaten conduct there might be several ways of reducing occurences of misdelivery in this particular case but you'll never find a solution if you don't understand the problem.
Those of you continually bitching about workplace coaches taking the money for nothing don't understand what the coaches have been trained to do under world class mail methods. Unfortunately most managers don't know either so coaches are not given the time to do what they are supposed to be doing.
Believe it or not Royal Mail has, and is, making a significant investment in the work place coach programme. They aren't narks or lazy Tw@s taking money for nothing, or most aren't anyway. They are in the system to help make the business more efficient by trying to make us more effective. The ones that have undergone the latest world class mail training know what they are meant to be used for, they just aren't given the opportunity. In this case one is being used properly and you never know, someone might learn something.

[fishtank]

Misdelivery is a problem, it's the most common cause of complaints about the service and costs the business a lot of money.

In what way does it cost the business a lot of money?

Lost items attract compensation, misdelivered items do not, since we have no way of measuring the impact of one on the other we have no idea whether misdelivered items cost the business anything at all.

Mistakes happen, perhaps the business should look at the most common root cause of a misdelivered item, that begins with the postie not taking enough time to make sure it's delivered properly but that isn't the root cause, you have to look a bit deeper than that into the nature and ethos of a business that continues to encourage its staff to deliver more and faster, more and faster obviously brings more mistakes, that's page one of analysis.

Coaching is pointless, we should all know how not to misdeliver an item but something has to give when efficiency and quality have a fight.

[tansorboy]

Mistakes happen, perhaps the business should look at the most common root cause of a misdelivered item, that begins with the postie not taking enough time to make sure it's delivered properly but that isn't the root cause, you have to look a bit deeper than that into the nature and ethos of a business that continues to encourage its staff to deliver more and faster, more and faster obviously brings more mistakes, that's page one of analysis.

Spot on!

[dannyboy]

mistakes happen in our office because you are sent out to do deliveries when you don't know where any of the calls are