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The USPS Needs Time Management

The USPS Needs Time Management
By Dee Perez
NAPS New York Area Vice President

Time management is defined as the ability to use one’s time effectively or productively, especially at work. It is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities, especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity.

Unfortunately, this process is lost on postal leaders with the number of standard operating procedures and processes EAS employees have daily, who then have to repeatedly listen to a long-winded Zoom meeting. There is no way EAS employees can keep up with all these obligations every single day unless a law is passed that makes working days 12 hours long and adds an extra day in the week.You laugh, but, yes, it is that bad!

Postal Service Headquarters EAS employees comprise 22.5% of the total EAS workforce. This tells me something is wrong.

I understand that the service (we are not a business) must change with the times to survive. I’m a supporter of change and analytical data. I like to know how my office is performing in the important categories. However, some of the data categories we must answer are ridiculously flawed.

Yet USPS Headquarters abuses drill-down teams, along with many MPOOs who continually drill down to make you feel worthless. They insult your intelligence because you haven’t saved all the identified potential hours in your office, based on four flawed categories on which they continually harp.

These Headquarters drill-down teams try to convince us we are giving away the store—when we are not—based on flawed data they want us to worship. These four flawed categories are from the triangulation report:

1. 60 minutes—It does not consider local MOU for breaks, vehicle checks, wash-up before going to the street and FOT, which alone equals 40 minutes, not 60—despite DOIS indicating 75 minutes of office time as an example.

2. GEO Fence—This program doesn’t speak to TACS and other variables that affect it. The drill-down team leadership understands this isn’t 100% accurate, but they still are trying to intimidate EAS employees by saying their people are extending their street and loading times.

3. 22 minutes loading—This is based on a national average on a small sample size, years ago. It doesn’t consider the TACS standby time, due to congestion at the loading dock. It’s another flawed program that estimates non-captured savings.

Here’s the issue in a nutshell: EAS employees are pivoting routes daily (it’s not even prime vacation time yet), but they are asked to analyze their carriers based on these four, pri-mary, flawed topics and have a con-versation with each carrier who shows possible lost savings, while getting everyone out in 60 minutes.

And let’s not forget the vast amount of service and safety talks that take up another five to 10 minutes. This excludes 1838c and 3999s going on for over a year and a half now, in addition to all the programs EAS employees manage and everything they must do daily.

No one in a leadership role at USPS Headquarters has ever managed on the front lines as we do today, hence the need for “time management” because it’s simply impossible to do everything, every day, the way they want it done. Things need to be scaled down to encompass a real eight-hour day, with a full lunch break that EAS employees can have without working and eating at the same time at their desks.

The answer is perhaps more field EAS employees working as administrators. Remember the days of SOPs and relief EAS employees? Bringing them back is a possible solution.

With dignity and respect, always.