I'm reading so much about quality of service, whether inside or outside of the company. I thought you would like an update.
So for those that missed this, this is what I said about quality at the half year results in November.
QOS in DO's
Looking at our delivery offices, overall, we are delivering a good service in most officers,but we have more to do.
There are a small number of delivery offices where the quality performance is disproportionately impacting overall national performance.
We have over twelve hundred delivery offices, and you can see that just twenty five offices or around two percent of our offices are responsible for around about twenty five percent of our delayed items nationally.
Ten of our offices or less than one percent are impacting fourteen percent
of our delays.
We have now done vast majority of revisions making our routes fairer, and this is something we can build on.
There are many factors that impact quality,
but what this tells us is we need to focus on equalising performance.
To help, we have created a delivery performance task force dedicated to support those units that need the most support.
They will work with ten officers at a time to provide dedicated support.
I just want to say that our team have excelled as key workers.
And as Terry said, and I agree, they are terrific people, and I am sure they will rise to the challenge again.

What I talked about is the importance of equalizing performance, and here is a chart that shows our delivery, office clearance performance.
at the end of christmas eve.
Despite the increase in omnicrom variant of covid before christmas, we performed better than last year.
The vast majority offices, in fact, seventy one percent were clear on christmas eve. and thank you,and very well done to those teams.
But we know that there were some officers that were particularly impacted in the run up to christmas, and they did struggle.
In fact, three offices, which you can see, on the right hand side of the chart, the large bars were responsible for ten percent of our clearance gap, and twenty out of twelve hundred and eighty six were responsible for twenty percent of our clearance gap.
Fifty percent or half of the officers that did a structural revision cleared.
And those offices that had not completed a revision at all, only twenty five percent of them cleared on christmas eve.
So overall, seventy one percent clear, much better than last year.
Fifty percent of structural revision officers cleared, and those officers that did not have a revision, only twenty five percent of them cleared.
Three officers were ten percent of our clearance gap and 10 20%
And it is worth noting that the week before christmas, our absence was over ten thousand people thats more than one in ten of the team absent at our peak time.
But that now brings me to January, and and clearly, we've been struggling
and struggling because, and this is a very big number.
On the fourth of January, we had fifteen thousand, one hundred and twenty nine of the team absent.
That's about one in seven of our team absent now, the good news is a thousand of the team have come back as a week has moved on, which is great.
And the change from seven days to five day isolation period, which is effective for Monday, suddenly in england, should bring another two thousand of the team back
And yesterday, close to sixty percent of the officers fully cleared.
So a big, well done add to those teams.
And this is also what I said at the half year results, the part where I talk about optimizing our delivery offices for parcels...
New ways of working
So team, both in the data. and when I'm in the delivery offices, and I've been in three again this week, it's clear to me that we need to fundamentally change how we handle parcels, because our process is not optimized, you know, stacking parcels on top of a frame, which is designed for letters. it's not sustainable.We need to look at our working patterns to make sure we can deliver twenty four seven and a parcel on a sunday or monday at the same cost.
We need to change how our delivery offices work. they are optimized for letters. we need to be optimized for parcels.
Once we have equal performance and have regular revisions in place, how will we reward our front line for going above and beyond for quality or productivity, or perhaps both
We'd like everyone to share in our success.
And it's getting in the way of delivering a consistent service for letters. and I think we just need to accept this.
What the data shows, is as a delivery office parcel volumes increase, first class letter performance appears to suffer second classes is fine.
So before peak and is something to do urgently, we need to start testing you ways of working in our delivery officers.
So we can deliver first class letters and parcels with great quality at the same time, and of course, achieving our agreed productivity flight path.
And in my view, we need something in place in as many locations as possible before peak twenty two.
So team, I hope this helps give you a real sense of what is going on.
now look, I've never seen a football team win the champions league with only nine players on the pitch.
So I'm hoping we are beyond the peak of our absence, and we can get all our team back to work as soon as possible, and of course, you must follow government guidelines at all times, and please follow our covid guidelines when you're at work.
Now yesterday, it's worth noting that around half of our absence is not actually covid related.

Naughty managers fudging tracked
OPG1
why are office managers, office managers scanning track parcels that can't be delivered as retentions are addressing accessible instead of being honest and scanning them as delivery not attempted, as a workplace coach, it's making me really annoyed as the customers do not get the correct messages about their parcel.
Simon 'not really interested' Thompson
Well, hello, it's sort of annoying me too.
I mean, look, we have to get the correct messages to our customers and team, but there's no point trying to cheat the system, all it means is that, you know, myself in the leadership team can't really see what's going on and then we can't help, and the customers getting the wrong messages means that they ring the call centres, which, again, is not good. so can we please stop this practice? it's really important that we tell the truth.
Um, this sort of reality is probably not really am helping anyone.
OPG2
Looking forward to showing a certain line manager about the procedure regarding "retaining" tracked items
Simon 'Head in the sand' Thompson
we won’t be following up - I am hoping this video will be enough…
Managers not rotating failures
OPG3
I came back to three days of mail before Christmas. it was expected that your day off would be covered where we are nearly two years into the pandemic, and a company of our size still doesn't have a clue of how to deal with it.
Simon 'how do you rotate a failure?' Thompson
I think I covered off at the start of today's video that having fifteen thousand of the team absent at the moment doesn't help and I took you through what happened before Christmas time as well,
Now look OPG3, I look at our performance every day, and actually what I see in the last few days, as you are making really good progress in terms of getting back on track.
We expect more of the team back next week, and look, I know which is what I said in my video, I was at the back end of last week. I know it's really not easy at the moment, and thank you for those that are clearing every day and a big thank you to those that are making big improvements every day, as well.
Simon 'Head now deep in the sand' Thompson
Team - I have just looked at quality for yesterday again - keep going - getting better everyday - thank you - as I said in the video, more of the team due back on Monday...
OPG4
Getting worse not better, moral is on the floor. Statistics prove me wrong
Simon 'The numbers are the numbers I tells ya' Thompson
drop me a line if you would like a catch up - we can look at your office performance together if you wish - but reality check - if 1 in 7 of the team are not in, the 6 out of the 7 will be working very very hard...
OPG4
20 - 40 walks fail daily. So much more than absence as a route cause. Thank you for the offer of a chat but sadly it won't change anything
Simon 'Fancy a cuddle'' Thompson
ok your call - keep in touch