LTB 325/19 – RM & CWU PDA Outdoor Actuals Addendum to National Agreement
No. 325/2019
30th May 2019
RM & CWU PDA Outdoor Actuals Addendum to National Agreement
Dear Colleagues,
Branches and Representatives will be aware that it is now a year since Royal Mail and CWU jointly launched PDA Outdoor Actuals via a National Agreement (LTB 261/18 refers and is attached), where the software harnessed the ability of the PDAs to provide visibility of outdoor activity across all Delivery and Collections routes.
As was articulated to our Representatives at the recent UK wide Unit Reps’ briefings, during recent discussions with Royal Mail both parties have acknowledged that since the introduction of the 2018 National Four Pillars Agreement, there has been a significant amount of work undertaken to deploy a number of aspects contained within it linked to the Delivery function. There are also references within the PDA OA National Agreement in relation to its usage that have now become time served due to the delays in concluding the new National Delivery Agreement (as outlined in section 19.3 of the Four Pillars Agreement).
In addition to this, the ability for access to the dashboard for our Area CWU Representatives has been an outstanding issue since the PDA OA Agreement was launched, accordingly the addendum commits that this issue will now be resolved with a Nationally agreed solution being achieved, which is currently being jointly developed.
As a result of these factors above, discussions have taken place with Royal Mail in order to both update the current National jointly agreed position in terms of the data usage given the increased trend data available, and to also jointly progress a number of enhancements which are being introduced to provide greater customer experience and to also provide further features to the dashboard which will help provide data for the outdoor operation. The enhancements in the PDA OA dashboard can also assist with the next hour reduction of the working week in October 2019; the detail of this is subject to further National discussions and guidance being issued once those National discussions have been concluded.
As a result, these have been captured within the attached addendum to the National Agreement, which has been endorsed by the Postal Executive. It is important to emphasise that the addendum builds onto those commitments contained within the National Agreement and should therefore be read in conjunction with this document.
In relation to the enhancements which are within the revised PDA OA software and dashboard, whilst they set to provide information to the outdoor operation there is also a key customer focus for the enhancements to ensure that Royal Mail can use digital technology, i.e. SMS and email, to give customers greater visibility of their parcel deliveries to help them plan their day. Providing customers with delivery windows is increasingly seen as a requirement in the competitive parcels market.
In 2018, Royal Mail introduced a 4 hour Estimated Delivery Window for Royal Mail Tracked 24 and Royal Mail Tracked 48 services.
Royal Mail has now delivered the following enhancements:
- Earlier customer notifications of the parcel delivery day
- Earlier customer notifications of the estimated delivery time
- Tracking Enquiry System (TES) and Royal Mail Track and Trace
In respect to the PDA Outdoor Actuals Data Enhancements, new features will include:
1. Trend Data – Viewable trend information will increase from the current 3 weeks to over 12 months with improved sorting and filtering. This should assist in improving understanding of activity based on seasonality and year on year change supporting improved longer-term planning and resourcing of the peak and summer operation, whilst fully utilising the relevant National Agreements and taking into account all local factors and working arrangements.
2. Visibility of stops – Periods of non-movement over 1 minute will be viewable on a map initially and later in a tabular format based on buckets of time. This will help to identify the number of attendance calls, difficult service locations, where a meal relief is being taken, when a PDA is left unattended and/or when a vehicle is held up in traffic.
3. Collection Service Points – Service points have been added to the mapping feature in the Collections dashboard. These can be compared to actual stop points to identify any sequencing or positioning errors and to understand actual service time.
4. Collections on Delivery – An additional ‘CoD’ field will allow users to identify and review only those duties that have undertaken collections on delivery and if any struggle to meet despatch services for either a weekday or Saturday.
5. Route Matching – From the summer the system will start capturing the validated ‘route number barcode’ information from the PDA login. This will allow users to view actual activity performed against planned routes in A-Plus (and Route Manager) and compare departure, return and duration times. It is also expected to be able to identify activity associated with Parcels, LAT and Ad-Hoc routes. Once Route Matching has been delivered, the Trend Report will be updated allowing users to filter historic data by route.
6. Reporting in the Cloud – RM data and reporting teams have begun a major modernisation of the reporting services (the Future Data Platform) and PDA Outdoor Actuals will be one of the first applications to migrate across to a new platform using Google Cloud services. This should improve the performance and availability of the Outdoor Actuals dashboard.
It is important to note that within the addendum both parties have reiterated that in relation to Weekly Resourcing Meetings, the outputs and use of PDA data can be used to assist Weekly Resourcing Meetings and provide a platform to ensure that all outdoor activity can be planned more efficiently and balanced to provide a fair, manageable, achievable and sustainable workload for all employees, taking fully into account all local factors and working arrangements including actual duty start/ finish times, scheduling of Meal Reliefs and that SSOW and SOPs are being applied. This can also include understanding whether any instances of lapsing and absorption are fair, proportionate and appropriate.
In addition, we have jointly recommitted to closely monitor the deployment of the enhancements to PDA Outdoor Actuals through the implementation process and monthly review meetings will take place between both parties in regards to both its application and how the data is being used in order to ensure that both the spirit and intent of the Agreement and addendum are being applied. Where Branches and Representatives have any examples of breaches of the Agreement or the addendum they should refer these to the Outdoor Department and also progress these through the IR Framework.
We have also attached the User Guides which will be used for the training programme which will be undertaken. It is important to stress that although these guides have been developed by Royal Mail, the Outdoor Department has had some opportunity to input into them in order to ensure the reference to all local factors regarding actual start/finish times and meal reliefs is also taken into account when reviewing the data.
Whilst the issue and use of data is understandably a contentious subject, the reality is that Royal Mail have the ability to enhance the systems and back of house technology and to launch enhancements to software and systems with or without agreement of the CWU, and to some degree in a similar way that apps are updated on a smart phone. Therefore the key aspect for ourselves is that we build in the necessary safeguards and involvement for both our members and our Representatives when faced with this challenge. This is particularly so taking into account Royal Mail’s recent capital markets day announcements and the tone of the communications that they have issued in regards to the use of data and technology.
Therefore we are as satisfied as we can be that with the safeguards contained within the Four Pillars Agreement along with the original Agreement and this addendum, we have achieved the necessary commitments within these Nationally agreed documents, this along with the Postal Executive’s Emergency Motion to this year’s Annual Conference which was unanimously endorsed, we believe makes the Union’s position clear in this regard.
Any queries to the content of the above, please contact the Outdoor Department, reference 530, email address: outdoorsecretary@cwu.org.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Baulch
CWU Assistant Secretary
LTB 325.19 – RM & CWU PDA Outdoor Actuals Addendum to National Agreement
RM & CWU National Agreement Covering the Use of PDA Outdoor Actuals 2018
PDA OA Trend Data User Guide Final
PDA OA Understanding the Dashboard Final