Postal Department – trialling ‘live-online’ training for our reps

Postal, Royal Mail Group (EMP) August 13 2020

Within the context of the ongoing Covid-19 restrictions, the CWU postal department have been trialling live online training for relatively new workplace reps, covering three basic areas of their work – IR Framework, Attendance and Conduct.

North East divisional rep Bob McGuire is leading the project on behalf of the CWU Postal Department Education & Training Sub-Committee, and he explains to CWU News that “the syllabus, the slides, information and specifics are all exactly the same as the classroom courses we were doing pre-Covid.

“But the more informal elements of what we’ve done in the classroom – the discussions and the group exercises for example – have been taken out and so we’ve been presenting the course in three 90-minute sessions via the ‘goto meeting’ facility,” he explains, describing the online format as a “short, sharp” version of the course.

Last week, 11 Royal Mail CWU reps from around the union’s North East Division participated in the classes, studying IR Framework on Tuesday, Attendance Procedures the next day and followed up by a Conduct Agreement session the day after

CWU News was invited to sit in on last Thursday evening’s session, which Bob opened with an introductory video featuring CWU national officer Ray Ellis, a Royal Mail senior manager and a national official from the Unite union – and then it was down to business.

Using the ‘share-screen’ facility, Bob featured each of the dozen or so course slides in turn, explaining each point and then asking for questions, while the students – either at home or in their workplace union room – sat at their screens concentrating intently.

The Conduct class rounds off with another video, this one a ‘role-play’ training film, which features an imaginary disciplinary case – actors playing the parts of the manager, the employee and the CWU rep – and at various points during the ‘play’, postal executive member Steve Haliwell cuts in to emphasise various points where the rep needs to be interjecting or objecting.

Speaking afterwards, Grimsby Delivery Office unit rep Adam Shortland described the three classes as “good jam-packed sessions, at a good pace and easy to follow.”

Adam, who has served in his current role for several months, also suggested that some ‘homework’ exercises and then a follow-up, or a ‘re-cap’ perhaps a week or two later could be useful to “ensure that all this information properly sinks in.”

Around 150 people work at his Royal Mail unit, which delivers to quite a wide geographical area and he says that he decided to volunteer to become the second of two unit reps there “because I like to see things fair and equal.”

This week of training had been extremely helpful, Adam continued, saying that “Bob’s really good and certainly knows his stuff – and I’ll feel much more confident now if any ‘flashpoints’ occur at the office, or other issues to deal with.

“I can reference everything we’ve gone through – and I’ve also got a more experienced rep here I can ask advice from and our area rep as well.” 

Laura Randles represents around 60 members at Northallerton D.O. in North Yorkshire – a role she took on in January.

“I really liked the course sessions and they’ve given me a lot more confidence to do my job as a CWU rep,” she says, adding: “I’ll know now how to approach situations and also what I should expect, plus I’ve got all the information, the slides etc which I can look back over.

“I liked how Bob kept pausing after each slide to ask for our questions and the many examples he gave of workplace situations from his own experience and how these can be tackled.”

Laura took on the unit rep position when it was put up on the D.O. notice board, because the unit had not had a rep for some time previously and she wanted to make sure that there was “better communication and support for our members.

“Things were happening, but we weren’t getting the reasons why,” she tells CWU News, adding that she was determined to change this for the better.

This training format was something she felt was quite positive, enabling her to follow it from her home – “and this helped me to focus, as I was in a quiet room with no distractions or any issues about travel etc.”

Tyneside Mail Centre in Newcastle is where Alex Whitehouse works, representing our younger members as the Young Workers officer for Newcastle Amal Branch.

Alex would “prefer to be in a classroom,” and he cites the “face-to-face aspects, the discussions and the ‘role-play’,” which he experienced when he attended a residential training course last year, as his reasons.

“Nothing can beat that,” he believes, but he also adds his own appreciation of his live-online course tutor, who was “great” and goes on to say that, within this context, the 90-minute duration was “about the right length – they shouldn’t be longer than two hours in my opinion in terms of attention-span.”

Reacting to the feedback, Bob McGuire agrees that this format does not lend itself well to the group work, which is a key feature of the course in the classroom – as well as the informal networking that reps are able to do during breaks.

“But we’ve covered all the specifics on this live-online format and of course there’s plenty of scope for pre-work as well as follow-ups and refreshers for example.

“Also, this much more concentrated format does make it a lot more focussed,” he adds.

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Terry Pullinger – Feedback and the next steps

CWU deputy general secretary Terry Pullinger is “delighted” with the positive feedback from the trial and the fact that the Postal Executive has now endorsed the next steps in rolling out this online-live training.

And Terry gives a “big thank you to Bob McGuire and the rest of our Postal Department Education & Training Sub-Committee for their work in progressing this.

“They’ve all done a superb piece of work putting this trial together and the feedback that has been received from the pilot area is extremely positive,” he says, adding that training will now be given to the tutors in each division and a video training plan agreed for each branch area – which will provide further support to reps on the frontline.

“Obviously, this has been driven by circumstances and we want to get back to face-to-face training as soon as we can – but access to training has been a key agenda item during these difficult times and live-online training could also have a supplementary role to play in the postal industrial training portfolio in the future,” our DGSP continues. 

“Finally, a big thank you to our reps – it’s a noble decision to volunteer to represent your fellow workers and it’s fantastic to see enthusiastic new reps like yourselves coming through.

 “The very best of luck to you in the new roles you’ve undertaken – and our solemn undertaking to you is to provide all the support and assistance we possibly can,” Terry concluded.