Seasonal hours! Whats the point?

[scotchy1962]

You would have thought someone would have brought this up in the union.
The reason seasonal variation was brought in/enforced, was that during the light summer period we supposedly had less work and by letting us/making us work less hours in the summer they would be doing us some sort of favour and we should all be thankful. Then at xmas when it's busier we would have the hours to complete.
I don't know about anyone else, but we have been pretty much battered for the whole summer with parcel volumes through the roof and today has to be the worst tuesday i have had in 18yrs.
So nobody has been able to complete during the "lighter period" and from now until xmas chances are nobody will without o/t.
Now surely this defeats the purpose of seasonal hours and the reasons for doing them in the first place, and i know and do just work my hours, but surely there's some sort of argument to be had around this as there really isn't any need for the variation as there's enough work the whole year round.

[yellowbelly]

You would have thought someone would have brought this up in the union.
The reason seasonal variation was brought in/enforced, was that during the light summer period we supposedly had less work and by letting us/making us work less hours in the summer they would be doing us some sort of favour and we should all be thankful. Then at xmas when it's busier we would have the hours to complete.
I don't know about anyone else, but we have been pretty much battered for the whole summer with parcel volumes through the roof and today has to be the worst tuesday i have had in 18yrs.
So nobody has been able to complete during the "lighter period" and from now until xmas chances are nobody will without o/t.
Now surely this defeats the purpose of seasonal hours and the reasons for doing them in the first place, and i know and do just work my hours, but surely there's some sort of argument to be had around this as there really isn't any need for the variation as there's enough work the whole year round.

Tuesdays used to be dead....now we get battered and failures on a Tuesday - unbelievable. Lucky if we've caught up by Saturday.

[Perseus]

I can only assume that it works in some places. Perhaps ones that don't shift too much due to the network window change. We are failing just as badly if not worse at 37 hours vs 35.

[ted_e_bear]

They can't organise anything properly, I'm pretty sure lapsing was introduced for summer when it got quiet to enable more holiday slots when people wanted them which to be fair is probably a good thing, but oh no it ended up simply being a way to try to offset having insufficient amount of staff, no extra leave slots were offered at our place, usual denial of odd days off requests, no change whatsoever.

When I first started the way I saw it was that summer was quiet and we got off early, in winter the run up to Christmas was busy as f**k so as a trade off it was accepted that overtime to clear would be required and as such most would go above and beyond to get the job done.

Fast forward to the obsession that we're all work shy want to finish early lazy bastards, introducing ideas like this seasonal hours to squeeze every last bit and what a surprise that good will has nearly disappeared.

[postslippete]

One of the reasons for seasonal variations was to significantly reduce lapsing but as it is now firmly bolted onto our duties its small wonder that many posties are still working past their times in the Summer. Parcel volumes have increased because we all have bigger duties plus we are also delivering more oversized.

One of the main issues with lapsing is that it didn't give us any real consistency of the estimated delivery window for customers. I wonder if this has improved now that managers have been telling posties to deliver two days worth of mail and just deliver the Tracked items on the other round?

[clashcityrocker]

but surely there's some sort of argument to be had around this as there really isn't any need for the variation as there's enough work the whole year round.

Do you still work longs and shorts?

[scotchy1962]

but surely there's some sort of argument to be had around this as there really isn't any need for the variation as there's enough work the whole year round.

Do you still work longs and shorts?

No idea what that is. I work the same hours everyday.

[LouBarlow]

I can only assume that it works in some places. Perhaps ones that don't shift too much due to the network window change. We are failing just as badly if not worse at 37 hours vs 35.

We don’t have enough traffic to fill the summer hours at ours. This week we have shifted to the longer days without any real uptick in volumes (yet!) so on my shortest day of the week, we had to drive round trying to get rid of 739 items and still made over 30 minutes at the end of the day. Starting on time and having a break.

It doesn’t seem to work as intended anywhere really if some offices have too much time and others not enough even during the summer.

[scotchy1962]

I can only assume that it works in some places. Perhaps ones that don't shift too much due to the network window change. We are failing just as badly if not worse at 37 hours vs 35.

We don’t have enough traffic to fill the summer hours at ours. This week we have shifted to the longer days without any real uptick in volumes (yet!) so on my shortest day of the week, we had to drive round trying to get rid of 739 items and still made over 30 minutes at the end of the day. Starting on time and having a break.

It doesn’t seem to work as intended anywhere really if some offices have too much time and others not enough even during the summer.

Hmmm it seems you work in some kind of Posties nirvana Lou and i would transfer to it except we would probably not make good work mates, but lucky you.
Today i had as many tracked as you would expect last xmas, so god knows what this year is going to be like if it's worse than this.

[LouBarlow]

I can only assume that it works in some places. Perhaps ones that don't shift too much due to the network window change. We are failing just as badly if not worse at 37 hours vs 35.

We don’t have enough traffic to fill the summer hours at ours. This week we have shifted to the longer days without any real uptick in volumes (yet!) so on my shortest day of the week, we had to drive round trying to get rid of 739 items and still made over 30 minutes at the end of the day. Starting on time and having a break.

It doesn’t seem to work as intended anywhere really if some offices have too much time and others not enough even during the summer.

Hmmm it seems you work in some kind of Posties nirvana Lou and i would transfer to it except we would probably not make good work mates, but lucky you.
Today i had as many tracked as you would expect last xmas, so god knows what this year is going to be like if it's worse than this.

Yes so you keep saying. I think it is long established that I work in a decent office, which accounts for probably 1% of all the units in the country. It isn’t just down to the people of shite offices to post on here you know? Not everything has to be negative and moaning constantly. We are getting enough packets but mail volume is just dead.

[clashcityrocker]

.

[clashcityrocker]

Do you still work longs and shorts?

No idea what that is. I work the same hours everyday.

Long days and short days.
In most of the offices I have worked in (4/5) the full time staff work longer hours on heavier days and shorter hours on lighter days.
It is just the same principal.

[TopperGas]

Perhaps if all the DO's were fully staffed seasonal hours would work problem is that hardly any DO's seem to be fully staffed so we have to face double or even triple mail most days, meaning we have no extra capacity to then assist the DPR staff if they get overloaded with parcels.

[LouBarlow]

Do you still work longs and shorts?

No idea what that is. I work the same hours everyday.

Long days and short days.
In most of the offices I have worked in (4/5) the full time staff work longer hours on heavier days and shorter hours on lighter days.
It is just the same principal.

Exactly how it works in ours. Wednesday and Thursday are the longest Monday and Tuesday the shortest.

[tramssirhc]

Ask Martin Walsh. He declared on YouTube the other week we could make 25 minutes a day and counter the effects of later starts. Absolute rubbish. Members were lucky to get their 10 minutes back, let alone 25.