Will Usps Start Hiring Carriers Again

Objective

Our objective was to assess the Postal Service's effectiveness in reducing not-career employee turnover and evaluate underlying reasons for not-career employee turnover.

The Postal Service hires non-career employees to supplement its regular workforce and reduce staffing costs. Non-career employees are temporary workers who exercise not receive the same employee benefits as career employees, are not always guaranteed a set schedule, and can piece of work from 1 to 7 days per week. In fiscal year (FY) 2019, the Postal Service had about 136,000 not career employees which represented about 21 per centum of its 633,000 employees.

The Postal Service has 4 non-career employee labor designations or crafts:

  ■ Postal service handler assistant position — unloads and moves mail in plants.

  ■ Postal support employee position — processes postal service and sells postage at post offices.

  ■ Urban center carrier assistant position — delivers postal service on designated city routes.

  ■ Rural carrier associate position — delivers mail on rural routes.

The Postal Service establishes a non-career employee turnover goal every bit part of its annual National Functioning Assessment (NPA). This goal is used to measure non-career employee turnover to help reduce the Postal Service'south cost of preparation non-career employees. In FY 2019, the goal was 34.08 pct.

We conducted site visits at fourteen commune offices, 12 post offices, and two processing and distribution centers (P&DC). These visits represented all seven Postal Service areas and included sites with higher and lower unemployment and non-career employee turnover rates.

Findings

Over the last four years, Postal service Human being Resources Headquarters (Hr‑HQ) management took actions to reduce non-career employee turnover. Although the almanac turnover decreased from 42.8 per centum in FY 2022 to 38.5 per centum in FY 2019, it nonetheless exceeded the NPA goal of 34.8 percentage in FY 2022 and 34.08 pct in FY 2019. Also, the FY 2022 turnover rate exceeded the FYs 2022 and 2022 rates. In FY 2019, the city carrier assistant positions had the highest turnover at 45.8 pct while the postal support employee positions had the lowest turnover at 34.4 percent.

To run into the FYs 2022 and 2022 34.08 percent NPA non-career employee turnover goals, the Postal Service would have had to retain almost three,000 more than non‑career employees in FY 2022 and almost 5,900 more than non‑career employees in FY 2019. We calculated this would have reduced the cost of onboarding and training past about $4.1 million in FY 2022 and about $ix.6 meg in FY 2022 based on management's judge of total onboarding and preparation costs.

Direction estimated the Postal Service saved about $8 billion in labor toll from FYs 2022 to 2022 past employing non-career employees. However, they did not measure the cost savings associated with the NPA not-career employee turnover functioning. On boilerplate in FY 2019, non-career employees who left, worked for the Mail service for about 81 days. Measuring the potential cost savings associated with reducing non-career employee turnover would aid ensure management focuses on improvement.

As well, not-career employee turnover could exist improved if 60 minutes-HQ direction developed a single comprehensive strategic programme for recruiting, hiring, and retaining not-career employees. Hr-HQ management developed individual strategies to aid in non-career employee retentivity at the local level. The strategies included developing engagement grooming for all employees and revising onboarding training to better address the needs of new non‑career employees.

However, during our site visits, nosotros establish inconsistent awarding of 60 minutes‑HQ strategies. Specifically, at seven of the 14 district offices and iv of the xiv facilities we visited, management said they had not received preparation on retaining not-career employees.

Because HR-HQ management did not develop a single comprehensive national strategic plan for recruiting, hiring, and retaining non-career employees of all four crafts, districts developed local strategies to assistance reduce non-career employee turnover. We plant the post-obit examples of local strategies at the 14 districts nosotros visited to help reduce turnover.

• At 11 commune offices, direction said they required managers to obtain commune office approving prior to terminating non-career employees. They did this to ensure non-career employees received operation feedback and were allowed an opportunity to improve their performance earlier existence terminated.

• 1 commune office created managerial policies and procedures for onboarding and preparation non-career employees. The managers were required to certify completion of the procedures.

• One district part required managers to personally greet new not-career employees, take them on a tour of the facility, and innovate them to other staff when they arrived at the facility.

• One district role provided refresher grooming to all non-career employees after their first 60 days on the task.

These strategies could be incorporated into a comprehensive strategic plan for all districts to follow.

We also found that 60 minutes-HQ personnel e-mailed a voluntary exit survey to non‑career employees who left the Postal service and fabricated summary results available to local direction with access to the Mail'due south information technology network. From FY 2022 to June 30, 2019, about 28 percent of the non-career employees responded to the exit survey. In FY 2016, the survey'due south top two reasons for non-career employees leaving the Post were "Lack of Schedule Flexibility" and "Physical Demands". From FY 2022 to June 30, 2019, the acme two reasons were "Lack of Schedule Flexibility" and "Didn't Like Supervisor".

Management at 10 of the 14 district offices we visited were aware of the voluntary non-career employee go out survey and six of the 10 district offices said they used the results to improve non-career employee turnover. Even so, they were not provided whatsoever guidance on how to use the data. We too found that vi commune offices said they performed their own exit surveys.

HR-HQ management said they monitored the reasons for not-career employees leaving the Postal Service and used the data to deploy strategies to address them. Nevertheless, they had not established any nationwide processes to ensure non-career employee exit survey results were reviewed by commune part personnel and appropriate corrective activity plans were developed. Establishing a nationwide policy on use of this go out survey information would meliorate enable effective and consistent actions to address non-career employee turnover.

A comprehensive national strategic plan and procedures would help ensure management consistently focuses on reducing non-career employee turnover, provides better oversight, and ensures best practices and feedback is shared.

Recommendations

We recommended HQ-HR direction:

• Measure out the cost savings associated with the NPA non-career employee turnover performance.

• Develop a comprehensive not-career employee national turnover strategic plan and procedures to provide more than effective management oversight. The plan and procedures should focus on achieving measurable results to reduce non-career employee turnover at the local level by developing action plans to address exit survey results and implement district all-time practices nationwide.

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Audit Resolution - Recommendation ii

OIG Response

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Source: https://www.uspsoig.gov/document/effectiveness-postal-service%E2%80%99s-efforts-reduce-non-career-employee-turnover