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Time Management—Who Has Time for That?

Time Management—Who Has Time for That?
By Dee Perez
New York Area Vice President

Time management is a crucial skill lacking in the Postal Service field. It’s also a disregarded necessity as management is a process of consciously planning and controlling time spent on specific tasks to increase efficiency.

We all have a routine we follow every day. The tasks often are ingrained in our minds from the minute we wake up to go to work until our workday is completed. Several months ago, I brought up this concern during a Zoom meeting with USPS Headquarters leadership.

I emphasized the urgent need for USPS Headquarters to provide comprehensive time management training. This training, I believe, would not only equip our EAS employees with the necessary skills to handle the increasing workload, particularly in Customer Service, but also help significantly boost their productivity and work-life balance.

By efficiently managing the constant flow of emails and daily tasks, often duplicated by different leaders, our employees would be able to allocate more time to their personal lives, thereby promoting a healthier work-life balance. This is not just a professional requirement, but a vital aspect of our work and personal lives today; we must find the balance to be effective in both.

One of time management’s most challenging aspects is when superiors begin yelling at, talking down to and issuing corrective action threats to postmasters and supervisors in their Zoom meetings. The EAS employees who have encountered this treatment must somehow gather their thoughts and move on with all the tasks at hand without the previous motivation they may have had until their MPOO dressed them down.

I tell those who have called me to complain to log off when the MPOO is out of control. If they call and ask why you logged off, tell them, “I don’t appreciate being talked down to, threatened by corrective action or embarrassed in front of my peers. You must stop this immediately!”

It’s difficult to complete your ever-increasing workload, then deal with a MPOO’s lengthy Zoom meeting, repeatedly listening to the same thing. This doesn’t include interruptions throughout your day with employees, union officials and customers while the phone rings off the hook. For those who do not understand, this is not regulated to a specific part of your day. This continues throughout your entire day until you go home, every single day.

USPS Headquarters leaders who created this work environment intensity never have worked with this type of accountability. Therefore, many EAS employees without time management skills are having problems adjusting to the demands of today’s Postal Service. My advice is to take one task, one day at a time, and give your very best; only a fool would ask for more!

CRDO leadership doesn’t understand the detrimental effects of their daily micromanaging and excessive dashboard data reports. They are driving everyone insane and hindering our ability to focus on the tasks at hand. A regular postmaster, manager or supervisor doesn’t have the time every day to look at, digest or even analyze every Dashboard data.

These leaders do not consider the daily distractions placed on these field EAS employees and how consuming they are. EAS Customer Service positions are the hardest and most underpaid jobs in the USPS today; there’s no comparison. A Level-21 at USPS Headquarters cannot be compared to a Level-21 position in Customer Service.

There you go—the unspoken truth has been said. There is no time to do this job how it is envisioned. This is why time management needs to be studied and implemented.

Every branch should strive to sign three new members monthly. This would increase NAPS membership by approximately 10,440, offset NAPS attrition due to 4,000 retirements a year and still net us about 6,000 new members.