2 in 5

[Mr Rush]

And Saturday just tracked and Saturday guaranteed specials.

Interesting thought. Would SGs finally get the service they paid for and the rest roll over to Monday? Specials are light on Mondays and that would shift workload off of the lesser-staffed day.

[TopperGas]

It's the Ic mail which is the killer on Saturdays, across two duties that can be 40+ extra stops, on rural duties that's easily an hour added to the work.

Why not introduce SG 1c for birthday cards and the like, I doubt most customers are waiting for speeding tickets etc on to arrive on a Saturday!!

[toonshola]

Honestly there is just no reason for a first class letter service these days. Waiting 1 more extra day for that birthday card or document to arrive won’t kill anyone and the world will still turn, and hey if you do absolutely desperately need a letter there the next day then send it via special delivery. I could ALMOST see this nonsense DM26 idea working if first class letters didn’t exist.
Proper archaic idea from the late 90s that needs binned in 2026.

[Perseus]

It's the Ic mail which is the killer on Saturdays, across two duties that can be 40+ extra stops, on rural duties that's easily an hour added to the work.

Why not introduce SG 1c for birthday cards and the like, I doubt most customers are waiting for speeding tickets etc on to arrive on a Saturday!!

The parcels and 1C over 2 duties are a huge ask, I agree. Especially for staff/offices not used to working this system, or used to bringing back/not doing loops of mail and just concentrating on tracked. On Saturdays, every item must go, there is no 'loops of mail' to not concentrate on. Like you say, rurals will struggle as most of their time on a single run can be travel between points - how can they possibly do 2 runs worth, if say it's at 2 opposite ends of the delivery area? Then you have staff that (within their rights!) don't drive. If you have say 5 non driving staff rota'd on a Saturday - there might be a total of 10-15 in an office (seriously common) and it would be stupid to have them all in at once - how the hell do they do 2 duties of tracked and 1C? The staffing doesn't allow for 2 in a van, the 26 page appendix has a very explicit statement about how critical it is that people drive for this system to work. Are they seriously going to bring staff in on a Saturday to act as a driver to drive people around? I fully support staff who chose not to drive for RM, why would they? But it can't be fair to drag someone into work on a Saturday in some offices but others get every second Saturday off. Whisper it, but there is a huge argument for non driving staff to just work Mon-Fri and I'd love to hear the argument against it - it's not their fault their job is being made 'van only' on a Sturday.

[Rve83ndxd]

Are they seriously going to bring staff in on a Saturday to act as a driver to drive people around?

Strangely, we all do it every day in my DO. Very efficient it is too.

[Perseus]

Are they seriously going to bring staff in on a Saturday to act as a driver to drive people around?

Strangely, we all do it every day in my DO. Very efficient it is too.

3 people covering 4 duties Mon-Fri. Single driver in one van, van share is non driver and driver in the other.

Saturday comes and 1 of the 3 who drives is day off, so you are left with driver and non driver and 4 duties needing done. Explain that, as no-one I've spoken to locally can.

[Rommagic]

More spare people then now?.

[Mr Rush]

More spare people then now?.

That was the answer as to how going back to 4-on-4 for December would work. Which rests critically on the assumption that the 25% who lost their duty after implementation in, say, September actually stick around to watch the ship go down.

[postslippete]

1 person covering 2 rural duties that take 4 hours each with 1C and tracked only? Impossible. Staff that are used to doing 40-50 tracked a day thrown out onto a double duty with 200 tracked and 50 1C on a Saturday? Impossible. Later finishes are coming on a Saturday for many so no chance anyone will want to do overtime.

There are often over 200 tracked items for the 2 duties that we do. For one person covering both on a duty span of 5 hours this would mean delivering at a rate of over 40 Tracked an hour and that doesn't include the travel time there and back, customer interactions and any specials and collections that need to be done, let alone any extra 1c letters.

As many of our Tracked items are bulky and/or require signatures I think the word "impossible" does spring to mind and like you said many staff prefer to finish earlier on Saturday. And if the Tracked items aren't being delivered then RM will be forced to put extra staff on and that means less chance of staff having Saturdays off unless of course they don't drive.....

[Racingpostie]

Are they seriously going to bring staff in on a Saturday to act as a driver to drive people around?

Strangely, we all do it every day in my DO. Very efficient it is too.

3 people covering 4 duties Mon-Fri. Single driver in one van, van share is non driver and driver in the other.

Saturday comes and 1 of the 3 who drives is day off, so you are left with driver and non driver and 4 duties needing done. Explain that, as no-one I've spoken to locally can.

The cover for said parings would be on surely as it's planned rota cover to keep the 3 staff over 4 jobs no?

[A2B]

The cover for said parings would be on surely as it's planned rota cover to keep the 3 staff over 4 jobs no?

Cover? You have people to cover? Maybe it's just our office (I doubt it) but we don't have many set cover duties anymore.

[ted_e_bear]

The cover for said parings would be on surely as it's planned rota cover to keep the 3 staff over 4 jobs no?

Cover? You have people to cover? Maybe it's just our office (I doubt it) but we don't have many set cover duties anymore.

I thought part of the criteria for the new system is offices must be fully staffed before implementation

[postslippete]

Somehow, I don't think that "fully staffed" means that every duty has a dedicated reserve person sitting there waiting to cover sickness, leave and vacancies.

Perseus makes a very good example about a driver and a non-driver being paired up to work on a Saturday because the model is relying on ONE driver doing TWO duties i.e. all the Tracked and 1c items. I'm more concerned about where the slack is in the system and not what happens on Day 1 when an office is fully staffed but 6 months later when you have sickness, annual leave and vacancies.

[SpacePhoenix]

The cover for said parings would be on surely as it's planned rota cover to keep the 3 staff over 4 jobs no?

Cover? You have people to cover? Maybe it's just our office (I doubt it) but we don't have many set cover duties anymore.

I thought part of the criteria for the new system is offices must be fully staffed before implementation

There can't be that many DOs anywhere who are fully staffed. I think that RM are likely to have very last DO moved over to DM26 by the end of September at the very latest.

[Rve83ndxd]

Single driver in one van

There is where you are going wrong.