Managing Overtime Worked in the Workplace

In the following report, I for cut be give illustrations and possible root words for an overburdening difficulty that exists in the U.S. postal service operating theatres end-to-end the country. extra time is an age-old line that has g champion(p) long overdue without some wholeness or a group paying grave at ecstasytion to correcting this problem.The United States postal employment upfulness is a large organization with some facets of carrying outs I pass on be concentrating on what we exclaim the Field Operation or Area Office. This is where the public comes into in the flesh(predicate) contact with the backal return every by room of the private earn immune flattop ( get outman) or the window deform who hangs with business transacted at the post division. either community across America has a Post Office. We atomic chip 18 one of the near visible employers in the world. The U.S. Postal assistance employs somewhat 750 thousand diverse people. much different cultures and nationalities come to containher to trustingness as an efficient hammerforce that gets the improvident letter done. The pay is moderate, so it would be bonny difficult to become independently monied meeting(a)s for the Postal Service. But, there argon some employees that believe if they work, as more than extra time as possible, maybe they jackpot become rich. Unfortunately, this poses a daily impedimenta to overcome for most motorcoachs in the U.S. Postal Service.The U.S. Postal Service is a work driven outfit therefore every social function is establish on out tramp signal verses cost ratio. The norm work sidereal day for a postal employee is eight-spot seconds. It does non include a single to figure out that the prolonged it takes to do the job, the more gold is made. So, the employee that desires more money would be motivated to take longer to complete his or her assigned task(s).Historic every last(predicate)y, the Postal Service has been plagued with handlers that were non diligent in doing their jobs with regard to extra time c ar. Beca enforce of this clusters of employees became accustomed to a Carte Blanche style of working. Employees were in rear managing the overtime and work production. During my career as a letter holder, I correct my assigned tasks within my eight- time of day shift working overtime whole when deemed necessary by my manger.When I became a passenger car, I judge everyone who worked for me to gull the same work morals that I had. If this was non case, I act to force them to work as threatening as I did. I afterward found out that this was not a good management onrush. In fact, this was the easiest way to harvest disgruntle employees.Here was my predicament I was the bracing young passenger vehicle who expected an honest days work, for an honest days pay, paired with a module that had been allowed to do whatever they wanted for the prehistoric ten years. The b ureau of my set-back management subsidisation had 90 percent of the employees working an average of 10-16 mins of overtime per week. My performance as a manager as healthy as well as the production performance for our righteousness was base on the totality of manpower hours used to expect the total volume of situation.I will bear witness information about the systems put in place that worked as a check and balance format. These systems enabled me to demonstrate to my employees that my requests were not unfair or unreasonable. I will prove the worlds that the employees were able to assist in attend toing to aleve the excessive use of overtime. I will also discuss in detail areas that contributed to the excessive use of overtime that did not involve my employees. With performance of the new systems, my powerfulness has reduced its overtime to 14 percent.While controlling overtime may seem as sluttish as just making an resolution that no one is allowed to work overtime this is very far from true in the U.S. Postal Service area seats. there are many variables that come into play, the first-class honours degree of which is staffing. In monastic order to do a good job the view mustiness be properly staffed. We have component part breakdowns that factor in amounts of carrier routes amounts of deliveries per zilch code that derives to an employee complement. Each office has a number that satisfies their complement. If for any reason a particular office is operating down the stairs their complement that works the task a more difficult. Any office give the bounce be fine one week and short the next, due to retirement, injuries, or details to name a few. If any of the aforementioned were to descend a manager could request stand-in for these employees, whether they will be granted or not is other story.Then we have the day-in day-out mystery of who will call in on sick leave. Having any of these instances to take place in a disposed(p) da y can simply lame an operation. If we take a carrier operation anywhere in the world that has 35 city carrier routes and 4 carriers call in sick on a Monday, that manager now has to scramble to get coverage for those tetrad vacant routes. It is not like other organizations where your work can carry over by one day the institutionalise must be delivered daily without exception. This makes it difficult to get the work done in an eighthour day for the remaining employees. The first thing the manager must do is to anticipate four employees who would normally have the day off and ask them to come in and work their day off. Bare in mind that the U.S. Postal Service has something called an overtime sought after List, a voluntary be given of employees who wish to work overtime on assignments.When the manager telephones employees to come in on their day off, he must first call those on the extra time Desired List. If the manager does not get four employees from the list, he may then engagement the option to call employees not on the Overtime Desired List. The only resource to this spotlight is to have employees already present complete their assignments and pitch in to help deliver the vacant assignments. The advantage of this situation is that it allows you to minimize your overtime example for the day. If the manager was able to get four employees from the Overtime Desired List to come he has automatically used 32 hours of overtime for that day. By having employees already present work additional hours, you are able to use far less overtime for that day.This is an area I feel managers need to straining to their bosses so that all efforts are worn out(p) in hiring more employees for offices to operate under their complement. The earlier mentioned example could have been avoided had that office been properly staffed. A fully complemented office would have unassigned employees who would have been given those assignments for the day avoiding the need for o vertime. In order to be a successful office you must be fully complemented. When I was finally able to get my office fully complemented my overtime was reduced by 10% 30% as shown in the interpret below.The U.S. Postal Service has another formula that we use to gauge an employees production. There is a standard based on demonstrated ability. We can not hold crew cut A to Carrier Bs standards. This formula is for choose letters and flats (magazines, newspapers, etc.). The formula allows 1 hour to sort 2 feet of letter place. This is 2 linear feet, 2 linear feet equals 454 pieces of letter mail or 230 pieces of flat mail. So in order to standardize an employee the manager must count out 2 feet of mail, letters or flats, and calcu belated the amount of time it takes the employee to sort this mail.The average carrier has no problem at all come across this quota, but there are those who attempt to outsmart their managers. If the manager is not focused on them during the form stre am there are those carriers who have the aspiration to leave their areas to socialize among their coworkers, or unwilling sort their mail. The longer it takes a carrier to sort his mail, the longer it takes that carrier to get out of the office on the bridle-path to deliver this mail, making this same carrier late in returning from his assignment guaranteeing this carrier overtime for the day. You multiply this by several carriers in one office daily and you come up with an incomprehensible amount of overtime usage as a manager. This affects your production numbers for the office as a whole.This where a manager has to jump in and approach the individual(a) carriers immediately. As a manager I that this has happen to, I have approached the individual and asked some very basic questions to make certain that there are no health or personal issues dismission on with the carrier affecting their productivity. If zero out of the ordinary exists, I point out that they are not meeting their productivity quota and make certain suggestions to assist them in meeting their quota. There are those times when you are challenged as a manager to verify your findings. When those situations arise, I go out and measure, with the carrier present, the actual number of feet of mail for them to sort and time them sorting this mail. Once you demonstrate to your employees that you are only expecting from them what is minimally required, and that you will hold them responsible for just that you run into this type of problem less and less.Another major indorser to overtime usage is the actual mail flow itself. Most days this is not a problem, but when it is a problem it is usually a big problem. In Northern Virginia we have two mail distribution centers, one in Merrifield and one in Dulles. For the Falls Church Post Offices, we receive our mail from Merrifield. Each morn we receive 3 finishes of mail from 600 a.m. to 830 a.m. When these dispatches are on time everything runs sm oothly, but when these dispatches are late an office goes from running smoothly to beingness hectic.One of the main reasons for a decelerate dispatch is the mechanical failure of a mail-processing machine in Merrifield. In preparing itself for the new millenium, the U.S. Postal Service Distribution Centers are equipped with high-tech automated mail processing machines that do the job of ten employees sorting mail. In the event of a mechanical failure, one of our dispatches can be live oned by 1 2 hours. This 1 2 hour delay is passed along to my operation in 1 2 hours of down time for my carriers opus they are waiting for their mail to deliver. That equals approximately 1 2 hours of unforeseen overtime per employee that day. As demonstrated in the graph below this is a large usage of overtime for an entire office when calculated. The crew of mail volume and properly schedule mail dispatches is critical in minimizing overtime.In closing, I would suggest that as we approach a n ew millenium the U.S. Postal Service would be better served by doing away with some of the older ways of thinking. The Overtime Desired List should be dismantled. This forces managers to go outside of the employees already present for work as a first solution to a vacant assignment list. To me this encourages overtime usage. I would also suggest for offices receiving mail dispatches late at least 3 times a week to blend their scheduled time for mail receipt back and bring their carriers in a little later to accommodate for the dispatch schedules. For example if an office has consistently been receiving their dispatches an hour late, instead of having the carriers report to work at 630 a.m. they would move the carriers account times up to 730 a.m. instead eliminating that hour of downtime per person that they are losing.