Message from Ricky McAulay: The use of PDA Outdoor Actuals
Personal Digital Assistants, or PDAs, are an integral part of our everyday work at Royal Mail and are critical to the business’ transformation in how we deliver for our customers.
PDAs help us win customer trust on the doorstep. They provide tracking information and alerts, estimated delivery times and photographic evidence of items delivered or left in a Safeplace.
Last week, I sat alongside CEO Simon Thompson and chair Keith Williams at a second Select Committee hearing where we were able to give further clarification on how we use our PDAs.
As a result, there has been a lot of talk about the PDAs and our use of Outdoor Actuals (OA). I want to be clear and remind everyone of our position when it comes to this.
While we have been using PDAs since 2007, we launched PDA OA jointly with the CWU in April 2018 to facilitate fair, manageable and balanced walks across Royal Mail. You can read a copy of that agreement here. https://www.myroyalmail.com/sites/defau ... 018%20.pdf
This is what the agreement states:
PDA data is captured automatically on a daily basis across all outdoor routes and will only be made available to view the day after the event on a dashboard report. Reporting will not be in real-time. The data will be presented in summary view first, highlighting key information for the unit and with the ability to drill down into route detail by exception using tabular displays.
Some key points:
The nature of the data captured within the PDAs were jointly trialled and agreed upon with the CWU
Our PDAs do not have real-time tracking capabilities on our people’s movements. We took a conscious decision not to allow real-time tracking. We do not know – from PDA OA – where they are or how they are progressing
PDA OA captures the start time of a route and the end time of a route as a PDA departs and returns to the depot. This is available the next day to be viewed on a dashboard
PDA OA captures the actual route taken and some time and location data points around the route for display on the next day’s dashboard
Only overall unit level PDA OA information may be used for display purposes. For example, how many walks were over or under the planned time versus the actual time. No information relating to individuals or delivery routes from the PDA OA system should be displayed.
The dashboard has the office-specific information of the number of walks undertaken, the number of walks started early or late, and finished early or late. It also highlights where someone has stopped on their route for a prolonged period which of course may be a colleague taking an agreed meal break whilst on delivery.
The report makes no judgement on personal capability or performance. As a local manager, or indeed CWU rep, what it can do is prompt you to ask questions of your colleagues – but it does not dictate specific actions.
You can use it to help understand why a route took a particular time, short or long, early or late. What we do encourage is the use of local knowledge and common sense in determining how the information is used in your discussions with colleagues.
This is how we, as a business, have jointly committed to using PDA Outdoor Actuals and I encourage you to continue to follow these principles.
This new technology is not being introduced to track individuals or to be used for individual
performance management and therefore it is confirmed that the data generated will not be
used for this.
#If we say it enough times-we will believe it ourselves
RM & CWU National Agreement Covering the Use of PDA Outdoor Actuals 2018 .pdf
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.
I Wrote-During Covid-Which is still relevant now
It's good to get these types of threads, the ridiculous my manager said bollox, so we can reassure ourselves that while the world is falling apart, Royal Mail managers are still being the low-life C***S they have always been. My BFF Clash The daily grind of having to argue your case with an intellectual pigmy of a line manager is physically and emotionally draining.
Agreed the pda doesn’t track but the tracker in the vans to monitor “safety” is more or less a live feed, put the 2 together!! Ricky is the name of a ten year old, says everything u need to know about him with just the moniker, may as well be Billy no mates
Yes it does.
It just doesn't provide a live feed.
Why that matters is a mystery to me.
Whether you get pulled up on day one or day two is really inconsequential.
ST said it was used for health n safety so if someone is lying in a ditch or in some other problem we can use it but if it’s not real time what’s the point just more lies
RULES wrote:KNOWN PERSONALITIES WITHIN ROYAL MAIL AND THE CWU
It is fair to say that those in the 'top jobs' come in for a lot of criticism on this forum, please post constructive criticism and nothing else. Any libelLous or slanderous posts will be deleted or amended, in no way should these personalities have any abuse aimed at them, period.
I Wrote-During Covid-Which is still relevant now
It's good to get these types of threads, the ridiculous my manager said bollox, so we can reassure ourselves that while the world is falling apart, Royal Mail managers are still being the low-life C***S they have always been. My BFF Clash The daily grind of having to argue your case with an intellectual pigmy of a line manager is physically and emotionally draining.
RULES wrote:KNOWN PERSONALITIES WITHIN ROYAL MAIL AND THE CWU
It is fair to say that those in the 'top jobs' come in for a lot of criticism on this forum, please post constructive criticism and nothing else. Any libelLous or slanderous posts will be deleted or amended, in no way should these personalities have any abuse aimed at them, period.
I understand that you try to post topics engaging with the workforce, but when its Creepy-crawley making a statement i suspect theres going to be a lot of POSTMAN EDITs going on. On this very subject let me just save you the bother "Postman Edit off!! You Postmen Edit!! lies, lies and more lies from the Creepster!
Have seen it on many old cop/ detective shows - wire the buggers up and use that lie detector thing It'll probably blow up. PDA actuals and every (speed) agreements are the only figures RM have left, they cannot use common sense.
It'll probably blow up. PDA actuals and every (speed) agreements are the only figures RM have left, they cannot use common sense.