Summer Resourcing : Resourcing to Workload LTB

[TrueBlueTerrier]

Some interesting slides from a brief re summer resourcing.

2nd Joint Workshop 13thMay14 V5.ppt

[barneyrotts]

in my office we can never complete our delivery within time so how can we absorb anything.

[dvbuk55]

in my office we can never complete our delivery within time so how can we absorb anything.

Well according to those who can't it all becomes clear with the weekly resource to workload meeting and of course the can do culture - except those who respond to that, can't.

[Lounge Lizard]

Letter to Branches






To: Branches with POSTAL Members

Dear Colleagues,

Summer Resourcing – Resourcing to Workload

Further to the update given by Bob Gibson, CWU Assistant Secretary, at CWU’s Annual Conference last week, intensive discussions with Royal Mail have continued in trying to reach an agreed set of national guidelines to support Summer Resourcing arrangements for 2014.

Those discussions have produced Summer Resourcing Guidelines which have been endorsed by the Postal Executive today.

This is the first time that we have agreed a specific set of national guidelines for the summer period, although we do have national agreements, agreed tools, procedures and processes already in place to support resourcing during this period and they will not be affected by this initiative. The difference is that we are asking units to come up with a summer resourcing plan that is not the usual 2 weeks in advance plan but for the whole summer period commencing on Monday 2nd June through to week commencing Monday 25th August, when we should start to move into the autumn period when workload normally starts to increase.

We do not underestimate the size of the task but we are optimistic that the guidelines will assist our Representatives and DOMs to arrive at a sensible agreement. To support this initiative a Joint Workshop was held on Tuesday 6th May involving CWU Divisional Representatives, Delivery Directors and IDP Steering Group members to explain the guidelines and what it means for our members, Representatives and managers.

Following the Workshop and during the course of this week the CWU Divisional Representatives and Delivery Directors will cascade the information and guidance to all DSMs and ADRs and this will subsequently be cascaded into all delivery units, supported by a video with a clear message from Sue Whalley, Chief Operations Officer, and Bob Gibson, CWU Assistant Secretary and an interactive WTLL session which supports this approach.

Clearly there are things happening around us that we need to respond to, such as the traditional reduction in workload during the summer period, compounded in some areas by the loss of letters to TNT and the loss of parcels to Amazon and other parcel couriers.

Both parties accept that we need to work together to remain efficient and competitive and this initiative is part of that process. However, we do need to ensure that this is done fairly and with the full involvement of our CWU Representatives. It is not a carte blanche opportunity for Royal Mail to impose lapsing and absorption and the guidelines make that absolutely clear. There are processes to follow and it should be used as a positive opportunity to provide more summer leave slots for our members and an opportunity to deal with outstanding and carried over leave.

This will be a real test of the relationship between CWU and Royal Mail and hopefully an example of cooperation and change in culture that provides everyone with some form of benefit. The pertinent extracts from the guidelines are as follows:

This does not affect or change any existing national agreement and all current agreements hold the field.
To jointly produce and agree a summer resourcing plan utilising all paid for hours, including overtime, that accurately aligns resource to workload in an efficient and fair and manageable way.
All summer resourcing plans will not be based on any predetermined lapsing/absorption plans or budget targets.
To provide people with advanced notice of what work they will be expected to do on a daily and weekly basis over the whole summer period and to provide additional annual leave opportunities over the summer period, including opportunities to ‘burn off’ any outstanding or carried over leave.
To jointly identify genuine opportunities where it will be possible to absorb workload including any travelling time within the scheduled duty time and not take people past their scheduled finish time.
Weekly resourcing meetings will take place and will review the agreed summer plan and make necessary adjustments to reflect any change in traffic against that forecasted and planned. These meetings will have adequate time afforded for the CWU Representative to actively participate.
The Fairness, Dignity and Respect guidance should be referred to and put in place where necessary.
As part of these new guidelines it has been agreed that the Integrated Delivery Programme and the Resourcing to Workload Strand, will be monitoring its successes and failures through the summer period to feed into the work of the strand going forwards.

Attached to the LTB are the agreed national guidelines and also a timetable outlining the phased approach to implementing the Summer Resourcing plans.

Any enquiries to Bob Gibson’s Office, quoting reference 160.01/230.05
Email address: hnutley@cwu.org

Yours sincerely




Mark Baulch
CWU Acting Assistant Secretary – Outdoor

Nearly 800 words in the Letter to Branches but no suggestion of allowance made for exhaustion working in summer temperatures.

[Martin Walsh]

1 if you cannot complete your delivery within your normal duty time you cannot absorb. That's what this agreement and Pay and Mod said.

The problem is as the London Graphs show and indeed the national growths show that traffic in Jan and Febraury is lower then it is in march and April when the financial returns are made and new council taxs bills etc are sent out , May and June traffic reduces and July and August it normal drops significantly and then in September and October it rises significantly due to Autumn pressure and then it rises again for November and December for Christmas.

Now in June , July and August your office still have the same delivery routes , firms etc and still work 39 hours yet work is much lower. This is the reason why Royal Mail want resourcing to workload. As if as is typical your traffic drops in June July and August by 15% then there is spare indoor capacity within your office. Equally your call rate reduces slightly as instead of going to 85 out of every 100 customers you now go to say 75.


The summer resourcing plan makes it clear that it should not be based on anyone having to work beyond their time in order to complete absorption.

In terms of heat exhaustion then clearly their is a risk assement. But equllay if you are absorbing a 600 delivery point walk amongst say 100 other people you are simply asking to prep and delivery an extra 60 delivery points and this can only happen if their is spare capicity within your normal duty time.

No one likes absorption but how can a union argue that if there is capicity within someone's duty and it does not result in someone having to work later then Royal Mail cannot ask you to absorb and at the same time that we want to protect full time jobs and allow part timers to increase their hours.

[clashcityrocker]

Given that Resourcing to Workload was part of Pay & Mod and many offices have been absorbing/lapsing since then and understand what "working all your paid hours" means, who exactly is this LTB aimed at?

[Martin Walsh]

Clash , the reality is that Royal Mail for a numbers of reasons really have not resourced to work load. Instead it's been about budgets and conference calls which make decisions on a wider basis then an office traffic forecast and whether a job needs to be resourced or covered.

This new relaunch of the 2007 pay and mod enabler is aimed at doing that. Nothing less or more. last year the amount of horror stories from everywhere not many from London dominated the lead up to the ballot.

[dvbuk55]

last year the amount of horror stories from everywhere not many from London dominated the lead up to the ballot.

Yes no shock there considering there are still revisions to take place 4 years on, of course disregarding that London is a special case

[clashcityrocker]

Clash , the reality is that Royal Mail for a numbers of reasons really have not resourced to work load.

Dingo, the reality is some areas (and not just necessarily London) have not resourced to workload.
Pay and Mod didn't apply to them. BT2010 didn't apply to them. Why should AFG apply to them?
(It can't simply because you cannot complete the journey from "job and finish" to "work all your paid hours" overnight. The cultural change takes time)

The reality is, by not applying the national agreements, the union created a two tier workforce.
That isn't a trade union value I can respect.

[halfull]

1 if you cannot complete your delivery within your normal duty time you cannot absorb. That's what this agreement and Pay and Mod said.

The problem is as the London Graphs show and indeed the national growths show that traffic in Jan and Febraury is lower then it is in march and April when the financial returns are made and new council taxs bills etc are sent out , May and June traffic reduces and July and August it normal drops significantly and then in September and October it rises significantly due to Autumn pressure and then it rises again for November and December for Christmas.

Now in June , July and August your office still have the same delivery routes , firms etc and still work 39 hours yet work is much lower. This is the reason why Royal Mail want resourcing to workload. As if as is typical your traffic drops in June July and August by 15% then there is spare indoor capacity within your office. Equally your call rate reduces slightly as instead of going to 85 out of every 100 customers you now go to say 75.


The summer resourcing plan makes it clear that it should not be based on anyone having to work beyond their time in order to complete absorption.

In terms of heat exhaustion then clearly their is a risk assement. But equllay if you are absorbing a 600 delivery point walk amongst say 100 other people you are simply asking to prep and delivery an extra 60 delivery points and this can only happen if their is spare capicity within your normal duty time.

No one likes absorption but how can a union argue that if there is capicity within someone's duty and it does not result in someone having to work later then Royal Mail cannot ask you to absorb and at the same time that we want to protect full time jobs and allow part timers to increase their hours.

Can i ask exactly how many walks have you done in the last 5 years??

At a guess id say not many on reading this, as the truth is unless its a mega light Tuesday the traffic never drops low enough to flex, this huge myth that the mail drops in the summer period is just that a myth from people who never have to do a walk.

Now lets factor in the weather conditions in the 'lighter' months thats never taken into account, we now deliver in the time that the met office warns the public not to go out in 11am-3pm. Now you are expecting us to do more walking & traveling in sometimes dangerous heat when we have already been walking & mauling bags/trolleys for 3-5 hours in this heat,well done.

Now another point thats missed is the small fact that most posties will tell you our jobs have been planned way too big by planners who are using planning tools & measures agreed by the cwu,another well done there. So this means if there is a big drop in the mail or packets(which are still increasing nomatter what pretty graphs show,we deliver the things not the people drawing pretty graphs) we can just about get done on time working safety using trolleys which slow you done considerably which is always ignored.

Another point is that we dont have enough full time staff to get us out the door in time to flex even if the traffic says we can! Du to the problem of when we lose a fultimer we are told we cannot have those hours back in the office & end up with a 20hour partimer whos job fulltimers have to fully prep for when they get in! (more time)


Another problem that is always ignored is the traveling time to and from the flex duties, some are right next to them and some are a 5-15 minute drive away from them,this can also not be avoided as some duties will always be closer!

Finally in closing in my D.O 90% of the time we dont take the flex as we have no time as its not dropping off as much as the cwu or royal mail say in most posties opinion & what ends up happening is line managers have to go out & deliver it! Which is not good for them or us! Absorption only works on extremely light days if your lucky enough to have enough staff on that given day to get you out the door ontime!

[fishtank]

The truth is resourcing to workload is completely flawed at its foundation level, the unrealistic planning values and fraudulant office reported "performance" levels. The union should have argued for Industrial Engineers to be sent into offices reporting an EP over 90 and they should have had professionals look at the core planning values to determine whether it was sensible or even possible to resource an office using these figures.

Every office in my area is seriously failing on spend this year, they just can't get the mail out the door using the resources allocated by the IWT and budget, One manager more or less begged the rep to go to disagreement over resourcing to workload the minute the Lead Planner and DSM produced the forecasted indoor work plan.

Managers are under incredible pressure to slash overtime spend, This will impact on our members with increased bullying and harassment. Good managers are heading for the door as fast as you can say VR, they see which way the wind is blowing. This will end badly for us and divide the union even further especially if some close their eyes to it because it doesn't happen in their backyard.

[toonslayer7]

The truth is resourcing to workload is completely flawed at its foundation level, the unrealistic planning values and fraudulant office reported "performance" levels. The union should have argued for Industrial Engineers to be sent into offices reporting an EP over 90 and they should have had professionals look at the core planning values to determine whether it was sensible or even possible to resource an office using these figures.

Every office in my area is seriously failing on spend this year, they just can't get the mail out the door using the resources allocated by the IWT and budget, One manager more or less begged the rep to go to disagreement over resourcing to workload the minute the Lead Planner and DSM produced the forecasted indoor work plan.

Managers are under incredible pressure to slash overtime spend, This will impact on our members with increased bullying and harassment. Good managers are heading for the door as fast as you can say VR, they see which way the wind is blowing. This will end badly for us and divide the union even further especially if some close their eyes to it because it doesn't happen in their backyard.

Bang on the nail mate

[dvbuk55]

Well it is all a question of theory. In theoretical terms all things are possible particularly if you know feck all about the subject you're pontificating about except from a once in a lifetime experience a quarter of a century ago. They are trying to apply theoretical values to an ever changing market, which, if they had any experience of the shop floor of 2014 they would understand the reality. Even the managers feel under pressure to comply with onerous evaluations which cannot be met. In an area where the majority are full time there is going to be spare capacity but in areas like ours where 50% of the workforce are part time as others have said, you just cannot get out of the door quick enough. As each full timer leaves the vacancy is filled by a part timer, then you have the problem of prepping and IPS. Has anyone else had enough of the bullshit from the professional chatterers? TBH I'd have more respect for them if they got off their arses and tried to do a delivery for a month and then propound how easy a time an OPG has - but I can guarantee they won't, even though they are paid twice as much just for talking.

[Martin Walsh]

Again in the last few posts we have when was the last time you done a delivery , I could ask when was the last time you did an audit of traffic , forecasted against actual , had a review of automiss which is the new traffic system being joined up on automation. Or when was the last time you saw the service view recording of the PDAs per walk in the 20 offices.

You don't have to have performed a delivery in the last week to know what's going on. In the same way a general does not have to fight every battle to know what his troops are facing

There seems to be a common view held certainly by Dvbuk that anyone North of Watford is working every second of the day , every day of the week and every week of the year. Well in the real world we know that's not true.

Equally some offices in the South and Even London have offices who have high eps.

Now clash London introduced the Pay and Mod agreement in full , it was what Royal Mail took executive action on during the dispute in 2009.

Fish I believe its easy to suggest something like bring in the industrial engineers and drop everyone who is 95 and above down as they are all being bullied etc ? Where is the evidence everyone is being asked to go to Morherwell where they are at 130 EP and according to those that go still absorb and are happy and free from bullying.

I am no fan of EP as I believe it is a flawed measurement scheme. Royal Mail are moving more to items per work hour as it's what the regulator judges them on and they have appointed a manager to oversee the performance of those who are in the bottom 100.

Now as Royal Mail is footsie 100 company it might seem popular on here to call for for what you have but it is an unrealistic call.

There will be New PDAs in the next 6 months which will be far advance of what we have and they will record actual finish times , attendance calls ,the route of each opg , the time spent of first time delivery and number of other things.

Again the CWU don't want people starting before their time , they want them to take meal reliefs and they don't want them absorbing if they are forced to work beyond their time. But equally we cannot argue that we want people to finish early either.

[clashcityrocker]

and they have appointed a manager to oversee the performance of those who are in the bottom 100.

Any chance of a list of those 100 offices?