It's probably only a matter of time before RM start doing the same for deliveries.
Casuals are next to useless and incredibly expensive/inefficient in delivery. Unlike processing you can't train a delivery postie in half a day and expect them to be effective, if you ask most of the guys on here they'll tell you it takes 8-12 weeks to get up to speed and even longer if you keep getting bumped from walk to walk. The churn rate for casuals is too high and recruitment/training costs too high to make it worthwhile.
It's probably only a matter of time before RM start doing the same for deliveries.
Casuals are next to useless and incredibly expensive/inefficient in delivery. Unlike processing you can't train a delivery postie in half a day and expect them to be effective, if you ask most of the guys on here they'll tell you it takes 8-12 weeks to get up to speed and even longer if you keep getting bumped from walk to walk. The churn rate for casuals is too high and recruitment/training costs too high to make it worthwhile.
That's the part you're not getting.
Eventually RM will bring in the tech to have all letters and flats sequenced together. They'll also have a much better and more powerful version of the REX software that PF use. The tech for both already exists.
Casuals apart from ones who operate machines, apart from the H&S stuff don't get any training as as such, it's more like "here's the frame/setup, here's the work, get on with it"
We've got about a dozen casuals who are doing full delivery duties at the moment. They're being kept on the same duties, which obviously helps, but they had a 'phased' introduction: a week delivering afternoon packets in the area they'd deliver, two days just delivering letters and packets for their duty and then two days with assisted prep but full duty.
In all fairness, they're coping as well as or better than most of our 'official' new starters who had the traditional '3 days shadowing'.
As more and more stuff gets automated in MCs, eventually it'll reach a point where RM will know on a given day exactly what stuff there is for a given walk. At that point I can see RM axing fixed walks, with all walks being dynamically generated.
I wouldn't be surprised to see in the long term letters and flats drop down to 2 or maybe even just 1 day a week. If I consider all the letters and flats that I personally have received over the last year, not one needed to be next day, probably once a week would have done. If that were to happen then RM could look at investing in machines that can sort all letters and flats together (they already exist, offered by many different manufacturers), then they might get rid of all frames in DOs completly
We know the company tried this bench merging malarkey and concluded that it was a complete waste of time. This "dream" of dynamically generated walks is even worse. I mean how could you plan on introducing a warm calling of D2Ds if you have 500 calls one day, then 700 then next? How would you know what D2Ds have been delivered or not if there ain't a fixed walk to go by? Plus, how on earth would you resource it?? Are managers going to be ringing Bob up while he is on his round to tell him not to come in tomorrow because they expect Pat to be doing 700 calls instead of his usual 400?? Do you see what I'm getting at?? And what if Pat decides to work his hours that day and leave 200 calls?? You would only need a few guys to be leaving mail and packets and in Royal Mail things tend to go tits up relatively quickly.
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.
We've got about a dozen casuals who are doing full delivery duties at the moment. They're being kept on the same duties, which obviously helps, but they had a 'phased' introduction: a week delivering afternoon packets in the area they'd deliver, two days just delivering letters and packets for their duty and then two days with assisted prep but full duty.
In all fairness, they're coping as well as or better than most of our 'official' new starters who had the traditional '3 days shadowing'.
There's a lot of competition amongst the casuals who are told that the more efficient they are on delivery the more likely they are to be called up again and/or taken on by Royal Mail. The new starters know that they have one year minimum on their temporary contract so they can maybe afford to go slower for the time being and/or take days off sick.
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.
We know the company tried this bench merging malarkey and concluded that it was a complete waste of time. This "dream" of dynamically generated walks is even worse. I mean how could you plan on introducing a warm calling of D2Ds if you have 500 calls one day, then 700 then next? How would you know what D2Ds have been delivered or not if there ain't a fixed walk to go by? Plus, how on earth would you resource it??
Who says that you can't have any duties who solely do D2D (which would probably give some scope to increase the amount of D2D delivered.
Are managers going to be ringing Bob up while he is on his round to tell him not to come in tomorrow because they expect Pat to be doing 700 calls instead of his usual 400?? Do you see what I'm getting at?? And what if Pat decides to work his hours that day and leave 200 calls?? You would only need a few guys to be leaving mail and packets and in Royal Mail things tend to go tits up relatively quickly.
How's that any different from now with walks being lapsed and people cutting off?
Who says that you can't have any duties who solely do D2D (which would probably give some scope to increase the amount of D2D delivered.
Its not cost effective as Royal Mail have to recruit extra staff and incur more costs. Many posties are only delivering 1 or 2 lots every week and I think Martin explained why that is on this thread somewhere. It can't be efficient to have someone else walking the same routes as the postie and paying them as well can it??
How's that any different from now with walks being lapsed and people cutting off?
We often have mail and packets left in the frame from the previous day from lapsing and cut offs which have not gone out. In some cases, there are 2 or even 3 days worth. Workstations often get stacked to the rafters with mail and packets on top.
Now, imagine that you didn't have a frame to work off and that mail that was supposed to go out, never did. Then tomorrow you get another load of mail and packets and you have the perfect recipe for absolute mayhem! In fact it will probably take you just as long to sort as it will to actually deliver - and thats not the general idea of it all is it?
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.
Who says that you can't have any duties who solely do D2D (which would probably give some scope to increase the amount of D2D delivered.
Its not cost effective as Royal Mail have to recruit extra staff and incur more costs. Many posties are only delivering 1 or 2 lots every week and I think Martin explained why that is on this thread somewhere. It can't be efficient to have someone else walking the same routes as the postie and paying them as well can it??
The ones doing D2D could do a different walk each day. If RM could find a relable method to collate them, without nesting them, then in theory someone could spend an entire shift doing D2D
How's that any different from now with walks being lapsed and people cutting off?
We often have mail and packets left in the frame from the previous day from lapsing and cut offs which have not gone out. In some cases, there are 2 or even 3 days worth. Workstations often get stacked to the rafters with mail and packets on top.
Now, imagine that you didn't have a frame to work off and that mail that was supposed to go out, never did. Then tomorrow you get another load of mail and packets and you have the perfect recipe for absolute mayhem! In fact it will probably take you just as long to sort as it will to actually deliver - and thats not the general idea of it all is it?
When RM cut down on the number of days that flats and letters get delivered on, you're going to have multiple days worth of mail anyway. If packets keep increasing in volume then I can see some duties being made that only deliver packets, possibly with the routes determined by something on the lines of REX
All of this depends on what the regulator ALLOWS Royal Mail to do.
At the moment they're getting away with more than they should be- come June surely they will have to clear all walks every day again.
Let's see where we are then and the revisions are complete.
Fun times ahead.
You simply can't resource to that level and at that late stage unless they made us all casuals and I suspect the mail centres would go down that route long before delivery.
We're probably already a long way down that road already, I reckon "proper" RM staff must be outnumbered by at least 2:1 every day now. It's probably only a matter of time before RM start doing the same for deliveries.
I like that you use your imagination to come up with various weird and wacky different ways to attack delivery while maintaining the strange position that processing can't change the most minor of things but most of what you are guessing at is unworkable, not because delivery won't change but that any changes would have to make the operation more productive and at the same time be physically workable and most of yours fail on both counts.
Processing will change, as time goes on, more and more of the work we do will be automated, so probably within about 5 years chances are that all remaining staff will probably be agency/casuals (or a VERY HIGH %).
The more processing is automated, the more data RM will have about what each walk has. It's only a matter of time before RM start acting on the data. Manual letters and flats have dropped off massively over the last few years. Just 2 or 3 people needed for most of the night.
I think more MC closures will be inevitable in the medium term, as the parcel hubs take more and more work away from MCs over time. You can get systems that can sort parcels down to walk level, that's a tech that I can see RM looking at eventually
So what happens to the regular staff - sacked or all just leave/VR ? - scaremongering rubbish
You simply can't resource to that level and at that late stage unless they made us all casuals and I suspect the mail centres would go down that route long before delivery.
We're probably already a long way down that road already, I reckon "proper" RM staff must be outnumbered by at least 2:1 every day now. It's probably only a matter of time before RM start doing the same for deliveries.
I like that you use your imagination to come up with various weird and wacky different ways to attack delivery while maintaining the strange position that processing can't change the most minor of things but most of what you are guessing at is unworkable, not because delivery won't change but that any changes would have to make the operation more productive and at the same time be physically workable and most of yours fail on both counts.
Processing will change, as time goes on, more and more of the work we do will be automated, so probably within about 5 years chances are that all remaining staff will probably be agency/casuals (or a VERY HIGH %).
The more processing is automated, the more data RM will have about what each walk has. It's only a matter of time before RM start acting on the data. Manual letters and flats have dropped off massively over the last few years. Just 2 or 3 people needed for most of the night.
I think more MC closures will be inevitable in the medium term, as the parcel hubs take more and more work away from MCs over time. You can get systems that can sort parcels down to walk level, that's a tech that I can see RM looking at eventually
So what happens to the regular staff - sacked or all just leave/VR ? - scaremongering rubbish
It's already happening. It's been many years since we had anyone join our shift who wasn't on a temporary contract or who hadn't transferred in from another shift or another office
The ones doing D2D could do a different walk each day. If RM could find a relable method to collate them, without nesting them, then in theory someone could spend an entire shift doing D2D
When RM cut down on the number of days that flats and letters get delivered on, you're going to have multiple days worth of mail anyway. If packets keep increasing in volume then I can see some duties being made that only deliver packets, possibly with the routes determined by something on the lines of REX
Its pure speculation of course but from what you're saying, we could have:
1. posties who only deliver D2Ds
2. posties who deliver the mail
3. posties who deliver the parcels
You then mention about RM cutting down on the number of days that flats and letters get delivered on. Well, if they did this then posties will probably be going to every call, and if they are doing this, then surely it would be cost effective for the company to have them deliver these D2Ds as well?? Personally I don't think that RM will have someone specifically delivering these leaflets unless we are averaging at least several lots every week. And this company appear to be shifting their focus heavily away from letters to parcels anyway. So please, stop this nonsense SpacePhoenix!!
However, the other suggestion you made about duties that only deliver parcels is more likely. It is what we used to do years ago before everyone had to have a van and it is a system that worked well. This is something that I can definitely see happening due to the explosion of parcels with many of them filling the combos and because we are getting a load of late parcels in once we are out on delivery.
So you get 2 out of 3
On the face of it, shareholder value is the dumbest idea in the world.
You then mention about RM cutting down on the number of days that flats and letters get delivered on. Well, if they did this then posties will probably be going to every call, and if they are doing this, then surely it would be cost effective for the company to have them deliver these D2Ds as well?? Personally I don't think that RM will have someone specifically delivering these leaflets unless we are averaging at least several lots every week. And this company appear to be shifting their focus heavily away from letters to parcels anyway. So please, stop this nonsense SpacePhoenix!!
A lot will depend on first if they decide to cut down the number of days that letters and flats get delivered on (not seen any confirmation that it'll happen yet). Second, how many days they cut it back to and on what days. It'll be a good while before anything happens as it'll require an Act of Parliament as the USO as it stands is set down in the Postal Services Act. My gut feeling is that the government would consider it a very low priority item given that there's probably lots of Brexit legislation still to be dealt with
