At the Helpline Members Meetings on 26th March 2009 members told us they were opposed to having their 20 minute breaks scheduled at fixed times 4 weeks in advance. PCS raised this, and other issues at a meeting with Senior Management on 15th April 2009 and argued strongly that fixing scheduled breaks was not compatible with individual needs around comfort and welfare, would reduce flexibility and would engender a more controlling and rigid environment and could affect customer service. Members felt strongly that it was important that individual members should be able to determine their own breaks in accordance with their individual needs.
Senior Management understood this and proposed that staff would be able to state when they wanted to take their breaks but would have to do so in advance. They also proposed that if members wanted to split their break into two 10 minute breaks they would be able to do so. PCS welcomed these proposals.
It is therefore extremely disappointing that Senior Management have now withdrawn these proposals and have told us they will be imposing fixed scheduled breaks from 26th May 2009. Senior Management claim “the WFM Geneysis system cannot input 10 minute breaks instead of 20 minute breaks nor do their Performance Team have the resources to input preferred breaks”. They also stated that this means that if we were to go ahead with their proposals Team Leaders would have to manually input all preferred breaks (as a worse case scenario, for up to 14 staff) every week. According to the employer this was not a viable option.
PCS rejects this view. We do not believe allowing staff the flexibility to request when they want a break is particularly onerous given that it is for 14 staff at most once a week. This does not appear to be a particularly huge resource issue particularly when we are doing all we can to resolve the issues that staff are telling us are making their working lives intolerable.
Senior Management also state that the option they propose to use is to schedule 20 minute breaks for all staff (except DDA breaks) via the Geneysis system, which requires no manual intervention. However DDA breaks will still be offered and manually input by Team Leaders. This is the key to the issue. The DWP tells us that Geneysis is a tool and is not the be all and end all when it comes to scheduling cover. Geneysis is a computer software package that takes no account of individuals and their working lives and the pressures, stresses and strains that members face on an increasing basis day by day. Members as individuals know what affects them when they come to work and when the best time is for them to take their break. This continues to be the case.
All the evidence provided by Senior Management suggests that breaks taken throughout the day on the present basis are broadly in line with expected and actual call traffic therefore we do not see any problem. PCS has already agreed that Senior Management can suggest to staff when they would like them to take their break but this was not mandatory until now.
Senior Management even claim they are committed to using any available time that occurs, as a result of this more efficient use of resources, to provide all Helpline staff with more time allocated to them, in order to read their e-mails, discuss procedural changes, read information on the Intranet etc which is a bit rich given it was the same Management Team that slashed the amount of reading time have for staff to do just that.
We must remember that the PDCS has willingly relinquished the use of 1,100 staff on the basis that PDCS claims they will be able to cope with the same amount of work. The reality is they expect more work with less staff which is why Senior Management are introducing this much more rigid, inflexible and controlling environment.
PCS will continue to oppose this imposition. We will be considering what steps we need to take to try to persuade Senior Management to remove this imposition and will be asking for your views shortly. If members have any views or ideas they would like to contribute please let us know.
We hope that the above is useful. If you require any further details about these or any other points then please do not hesitate to contact the Branch Office.
