Postal Service Updates Its Transformation Plan
“The Strategic Transformation Plan 2006-2010, the Postal Service roadmap for the future, has been updated to reflect changes from last year’s passage of the Postal Act of 2006. The law makes a number of changes to postal oversight and regulation, but does not alter the Postal Service’s mission – providing trusted, affordable and universal service.”
Postal Service Updates its Transformation Plan to Reflect New Law and New Technologies
http://www.usps.com/strategicplanning/2006-2010.htm
PostalReporter.com: A few highlights from the Transformation Plan:
The Postal Service will focus on four critical human resources strategies — engaging employees, developing and managing talent, establishing and maintaining market-based compensation, and managing complement to assure flexibility.
A. STRATEGIC CHALLENGES AND TRENDS
Significant shifts in the workplace are being driven by changes in the environment, workforce, and operating requirements:
Sixty-eight percent of the current Postal Career Executive Service (PCES) will be eligible to retire by 2010. Retirement rates are similar for other critical management and professional staff. Over 240,000 craft employees are eligible to retire during the same timeframe. Recruitment, career development, and succession planning are key issues.
Younger employees have different attitudes, behaviors, and expectations for their careers and the workplace. Overall, they are more flexible and likely to move, and therefore are expected to change employers and jobs several times. They are also looking for more flexibility from employers and greater support at work.
As postal operations become more information-driven, the workplace will need to become more flexible to balance changing workload, evolving networks, productivity improvements, and the need to engage all employees in support of revenue generation activities.
Explore Benefit Options
The Postal Service will work with the Office of Personnel Management to explore the possibility of applying private sector best practices to the FEHBP program for current employees and the over 440,000 postal retirees and survivors receiving benefits. Options include having a single program provider for pharmaceuticals or mental health services, diverting high-cost cases to centers of excellence with lower costs and medical expertise, and expanding the number of coverage tiers. The Postal Service will continue to pursue the possibility for applying for the Medicare Part D (prescription drug) rebates for eligible retirees enrolled in FEHBP. Finally, the Postal Service will continue to explore alternatives to the current health benefits programs for future employees, including wellness programs.
Aggressively Manage Workers’ Compensation
The focus of the workers’ compensation program has been to ensure that postal employees receive the appropriate medical care for on-the-job-injuries while managing the associated cost. The First Health program has been successful in reducing medical costs through their medical network. This program has resulted in gain share payments and additional savings through cost avoidance. The Outplacement Rehabilitation Program has been successful as over 500 former employees have either been placed with a new employer, retired, or had a compensation reduction. Successes of these and other programs are tied to the close working relationship and common goals with the Department of Labor. The Postal Service will improve the First Health process to capture greater savings. The Postal Service is also exploring a prescription drug card program and is currently obtaining bids from major prescription drug networks to reduce costs.
Manage Employee Availability
Employee absences from work as a result of on- and off-the-job injuries and illnesses also represent a significant cost for the Postal Service. Employee absences from work will be managed by expanding the Resource Management system from a sick leave tracking system to a comprehensive tool to manage and increase employee availability. By the end of 2007, this comprehensive approach to resource management, which includes a national wellness program, will be measured by the percentage of employees available for duty.
Increase Flexibility
The Postal Service will continue to enhance and develop additional workforce planning and tracking tools. These tools will provide standardized data reports and modeling tools to meet the needs of field operations. Additionally, for individual operations within a facility, a wide-range of diagnostic tools will be developed to allow managers to assess the improvement potential of their operations through scheduling and staffing changes. Diagnostics will identify staffing/scheduling alternatives to address common problem situations (high overtime, stand-by time, frequent temporary schedule changes, etc.) and potential solutions. With both facility-wide and unit complement modeling with diagnostic tools, the Postal Service will have more accurate plans for determining current staffing and scheduling needs. This modeling effort will also provide the ability to plan for future opportunities to gain greater staffing flexibility and efficiency.
These efforts will analyze future needs and build needed scheduling flexibility into planning assumptions. By utilizing part-time and non-career employment opportunities, the Postal Service can ensure maximum flexibility and efficiency in operating alternatives. Since an evolving incremental approach to changes in the current network is anticipated, efforts will concentrate on managing the associated complement transitions to maintain productivities and service throughout the period of change. In this way individual operating unit performance will not suffer during the implementation of staffing adjustments.
The Postal Service has developed considerable field expertise planning for and achieving the overall complement numbers needed in an operation. Future efforts will concentrate on maintaining maximum flexibility in staffing alternatives and in managing the transition of complement to achieve maximum efficiency.
Summary
Engaging employees, managing current and future talent, developing market-based compensation, and aligning complement to customer needs are the right things to do. Changes in these areas will be needed in order for postal customers to benefit from the many opportunities identified in this Plan. Implementing change is difficult — no matter what the industry. While postal employees have a proud history of delivering quality service during adverse situations, changing the culture to be more customer- and business-focused will not happen overnight. The Postal Service and its 700,000 employees have a solid start and will continue to be proactive in preparing to meet the challenges and opportunities ahead.
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Samson says on
Fri, 21st Dec 2007 5:28 pm
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Steward on
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Retiree Lee on
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real world on
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postalservice1986 on
Sat, 19th Apr 2008 4:50 am
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ConcernedEmployee on
Sun, 5th Jul 2009 11:31 pm
You are all so full of SHIT
And of course, you wont violate the National Agreement either….im sure!!!
Aggresively manage workers comp???? You mean f—
over every worker you can with a legitimate claim! And really put the screws to those with borderline claims! I thought the dept. of labor was supposed to represent injured workers? not postal management!!!!!!!!
Yes USPS has a plan to f*** over their employees, another way to save themselves money and not own up to their responsibilities of taking care of their employees. Like always, they don’t care, why should they start caring now. Hopefully the unions are watching carefully,and perhaps working together.
First Health is an insurance company who makes alot of money on saving other companies money , for example USPS. I know because I used to work for them a while back. First Health is a middle man, they make manuals and write what customers and companies will make and benefit. First Health gets lots of money for screwing customers/employees out of benefits and companies reep a benefit of not having to lose so much, and don’t have to pay as much at reduced costs. Some where in the middle, companies (USPS and first health) benefit from reduced cost. First Health gets paid who knows how much by USPS. The implementations that USPS is using are only to save themselves money any way they can. However they try to gloss their words, is a bunch a crap, the biggest crap. All their explaining about this and that is them talking out their a*ss**. If they were honest, they would say, “hello, we have found another way to save ourselves money, first health is going to help us, although it is going to screw alot more people over, we don’t care, it is a win/win for us. “
Whatis with tampering with health benefits for retirees. Many of us are CSRS and a lot of us are not going to get Social Security! Do I have to go back to some part time job for almost 10 years to get the lowest benefit of about 250 bucks? This is getting ridiculous!
The federal government ruled that companies are not under any obligation to maintain health insurance for retirees who are of the age to be covered by medicare. i.e. they may drop those retirees now.
Expect the USPS to act accordingly.
Oh, you didn’t see it in the the television news? Ah, it was just that boring corporate stuff.
Due to hiring freezes and recent increases in the use of casuals, Regular clerk employees who are aging and who have many years of service will be forced to become Mail Handlers. This is all part of the Postal Service’s “original” plan for the “universal” clerk. As a female clerk 43 years of age I have only been required to “occasionally” lift heavy containers of mail. According to the USPS website this is the requirement for clerks. Mail handlers are required to REPEATEDLY lift containers and parcels weighing up to 70 lbs!! At 43 years old, being a female and weighing barely 120 lbs. I would not be able to do mail handler work. How does the USPS intend to address this issue when excessing out of craft? Will I be forced to injure myself or loose my job????
You could always quit?
All Postal Retirees should get ready for a major reduction in Income when the Postal Service single sources our Healthcare. It will be the usual stuff that we must do it to be competitive. The promise of yesterday is the lie of tomorrow from these people. We are about to get scammed!!!
When’s the last time any of you whiners read the want ads?
can you give me a list of the health insurance companys that will be with the post office next open season? postalservice1986