Pay Model Meeting Update – 27th March, Warrington
Raising Issues
We began by discussing the failure of issue escalation process due to changes in structures and personnel within Evri. We have agreed to a new process, which is now in place, so that we have a clear pathway for raising and escalating courier member issues more efficiently than previously.
Agreed dates for JNCFs
Thursday 25th April
Thursday 25th July
Thursday 10th October
The Company have agreed to give the National Committee a tour of the Hub, so we can see the end-to-end journey of parcels through the Hubs, including the famed Volumetric Scanners. We will be paying close attention to these Scanners, and asking questions to get a better understanding of how these work in relation to Parcel Band changes.
Pay Model
We raised concerns about the lack of involvement in the Pay Model, and told the Company that they had to rectify the situation. The Company agreed that they hadn’t engaged as much as they should have done. We insisted that they set up meetings with the member group, and these are already being booked in regionally, and we will have a collective meeting after these have completed.
Benefits
We raised the issue that the Partner Rewards/Business Essentials offerings were not being utilised by the Couriers as they were not particularly good offers. We said that the offerings available to Evri employees were significantly better, and we discussed having access to this benefit provision for couriers. Evri are taking this away to review and see if this can be arranged. We also asked about the potential for active couriers to get discounts on sending parcels through Evri (the Company have taken this away to look at).
Performance and Compliance
65 new roles are being created within the Delivery Team, sitting under the RDMs, and will be based out of each Depot. These Proactive Service Operatives will look to identify trends and highlight where behaviours could drive customer contact. There will be actions coming out of these to offer additional training to help couriers improve where they are falling short, and pick up on issues before they get to the level that would cause Improvement Notices, and WYW.
The company told us that they want to align the implementation of these across the Network, as currently there are differing experiences dependant on where you are in the country. We asked if this is a design to get rid of couriers – to which the Company went to great lengths to say that this is about addressing issues, improving the support for Couriers, and ensuring that the same processes are followed equally fairly across the Network. Local Training (provided by CDMs) will be aligned to the digital process, and Performance Score Stats and Views will mirror what the CDM has, so there will be full alignment across all channels.
IT/Delivery App/Courier Community App
We made suggestions around improvements that need to be made to the Delivery App, and we highlighted improvements for the Courier Community App (in relation to Star Ratings, Performance Metrics, and the couriers’ ability to see their daily pay). The Company are looking at improvements in the CCA so that couriers can see their performance across different timescales (daily, weekly, and Pay Period to Date).
We talked about the Company offering the ability to see what earnings the couriers have made each day (week and Pay Period to date), broke down by parcel banding, so couriers can see exactly what they have earned to date, giving couriers an accurate preview of earnings as we move through the Pay Period.
We raised an issue with the company that the ability to see the current Star Rating for the current Pay Period is vital, as the current rating covers the previous six weeks, and means that the Pay Period rating could be lower, removing the courier from their HSP.
We also talked about the option of allowing couriers to draw down on their parcel pay. We said that this could potentially lead down the path towards debt, but agreed that there are times when a courier may need to pull some money in quickly (e.g. to pay for vehicle repairs so they can continue delivering), or for those who are transitioning from weekly pay to monthly pay. We will work with Debt Charities and Citizens Advice to ensure that appropriate support is available for couriers who may be struggling.
Route Optimisation, as we all know, can route completely differently to the way the perm courier would actually plan. This is currently in scope to be upgraded to a proactive learning system, which will learn from the perm couriers and how they do the route day in, day out, so a cover courier using optimise will end up following the same route as the perm courier (making it much easier for the cover)
All in all, it was a productive meeting, and we have already seen movement in the Courier Listening Groups and the Escalations processes.
Your National Committee.