DM26 - No Training

[silverspring]

I thought that you would need training to do the duties/walks that you don't know if you are working in a pod? I've heard from various people online and in my DO that when DM26 starts, you will only need to know 1 of the walks. One guy at my DO knows a walk (driver side) on a paired duty, but not the other side nor does he know either side of the other duty that will make up the 4 walks. His office is due to start DM26 on 10th August and been told no training will be provided - he just needs to "get out there" and get on with it.

Has anyone heard anything similar? Surely they'd make up pods with people who know both paired duties as they stand right now.

[Clappedoutpostie]

Been this way for at least 3 or 4 years in our office, rurals included.

[Perseus]

If it's any consolation, unless it's a complex or very unusually laid out numbering system you'll pick it up by the end of the first week. After all, the duties will likely be neighbouring each other and have similar style of houses etc.

[silverspring]

Apparently the other duties are about 1.5 miles away. Not sure how he's going to manage tbh. The passenger is a non-driver so won't be doing any of the driving on any day

[raXor]

He can just bring all the mail and parcels back for anything he's not trained on. He just needs to mark the parcels as 'delivery not attempted' on the PDA once he gets back.

Nobody should be on walks they're not trained on. Being the driver is even worse. Let me guess, there's other people that know all walks that would form a better working pod, but he's being shafted somehow because of a particular problem? If the passenger actually can't drive, it's likely the other people who would have been more suitable for the pod know this fact and are not willing to work with them because their workload will be unachievable. How is the driver going to be able to complete their heavy mail day and packets and large parcels with a non driver only doing their light?

[Perseus]

Do people not know any area at all apart from the duty they are currently on?

[raXor]

Do people not know any area at all apart from the duty they are currently on?

We have some odd setups. A lot of people only know a single side of a van share, then know a single side of another van share in a completely different area miles away, and then maybe 1 or 2 single rurals or maybe another one-sided van share, again spread out miles apart. There is no efficiency at all and it shows. E.g. Two single duties near each other fail due to no cover on one of them as it's their day off, so someone who only knows one of the duties is asked to do parcels on both duties. Having to do the entire job that day as a DPR is slower as it's always faster just knowing the route. People have often had to bring stuff back due to running out of time.

This whole selecting people to place in pods also seems very inefficient. There's so many people being displaced and put on things they are not familiar with (sometimes not at all) when they'd be a much better fit elsewhere.

[jagger]

Surely, unless it’s a rural or firms duty, you shouldn’t need training every time you do a different walk.
People used to do splits all the time on walks they didn’t know and it was never a problem.

[Gingerbread Fred]

People don't know duties unless it comes to ghosting overtime

Somehow that carrot makes unknown DPs more visible

[norris9]

When I started at Royal Mail I was moved around everywhere, I've done a ridiculous number of different rounds and many of them blind.

New starts these days tend to get gifted a duty the day they walk into the office and keep that job for months or years, so they don't know what it used to be like being new and being a reserve for months before anyone left the business.

[thefox]

When I started at Royal Mail I was moved around everywhere, I've done a ridiculous number of different rounds and many of them blind.

New starts these days tend to get gifted a duty the day they walk into the office and keep that job for months or years, so they don't know what it used to be like being new and being a reserve for months before anyone left the business.

Exactly this everyone had to move about at first it does seem like some new starts get to sit on a duty as soon as they are in the door whereas the old way was thrown in at deep end and it didn't do any of us legacy any harm also helped when learning ips.

[antcpfc]

When I started at Royal Mail I was moved around everywhere, I've done a ridiculous number of different rounds and many of them blind.

New starts these days tend to get gifted a duty the day they walk into the office and keep that job for months or years, so they don't know what it used to be like being new and being a reserve for months before anyone left the business.

I started in 1985 and would be covering different walks most weeks. If any of us said we didn’t know a round the answer from the manager was ‘ here’s your chance to learn it’.
And he was a decent bloke!

[ted_e_bear]

Going back to the original question if you're on a paired duty even if you've never actually delivered the other half you must be sufficiently aware of it to deliver it, you've driven through it multiple times stopping to deliver oversized etc, it's hardly the same as being dumped on something in a different town where you know nothing whatsoever.

[steve1873]

Should only require training on specialist duties.

[funkflex55]

People don't know duties unless it comes to ghosting overtime

Somehow that carrot makes unknown DPs more visible

Well they do say carrots help with your eyesight so it makes sense.