Audits at UPS; A Culture of Deception

[Integrity]

A division manager gathers the operations sups and reams them out prior to an audit and in in a threatening, nasty, intimidating manner tells his group "you better pass this audit or else".

A sort supervisor says to his sorters prior to a sort some "suits" are coming to check handling so they can help reduce handling related damages make sure your handling is perfect tonight."

An unload supervisor says to his people "there has been a report that unload stands are not being used and our extendos are not being used correctly, and egress is not being maintained. Some one is coming in to audit us tonight, make sure everyone has an unload stand, is using the extendo correctly and maintains proper egress at all times tonight."

It's time for the "dog and pony show", ever heard this one?

When Keter is Coming:
A district anxiouly awaits the announcement. Keter is going where? Once the notification comes, the district mobilizes a management team to the announced location to try to correct any deficiencies that are currently in place and may have been in place for months prior to this audit. The employees have been exposed to these deficiencies for an indefinite period of time but we dare not expose them to the Keter Team if we can get to them first.

A center manager says to his people, " we are having a seat belt audit today please make sure you are all wearing your seat belts".

These are just a few examples of real situations. I have many more but please feel free to add your own.

My point is:
The status quo at UPS is a fear based culture and a deceptive approach to audits of any kind. The purpose of an audit is to examine, verify and correct a situation. Trying to influence the results is dishonest. It may give us all an opportunity to say "yeah us, we got a 98, 95 or whatever, but it does little to examine, verify or correct the situation, elements or practices that the audit is intended to.

My experience has revealed that this culture exists on the corporate, region, district, operations and even the hourly employees play a small part in perpetuating this culture.

Enough on this for now.

Your thoughts?

I

 

[Anonymous 10]

What is there to say its a very hostile environment right now we work in the den of the devil. Maybe after they get rid of a couple thousand micro- managers it will get better but i doubt it.

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

It was the same when I was in the military. They would hand you a paint brush and a gallon or two and tell you "if it don't move, paint it."

After 21 years here I don't get too excited when we have company.

 

[Covemastah]

It's all part of the game,just play along & they will leave you alone till the next ""show"" !

 

[Integrity]

What is there to say its a very hostile environment right now we work in the den of the devil. Maybe after they get rid of a couple thousand micro- managers it will get better but i doubt it.

It was the same when I was in the military. They would hand you a paint brush and a gallon or two and tell you "if it don't move, paint it."

After 21 years here I don't get too excited when we have company.

It's all part of the game,just play along & they will leave you alone till the next ""show"" !

Dear thread participants,

In reference to the above they:
Please elaborate as to who exactly you are talking about. They is a pronoun that is used to refer to ones previously mentioned or implied. Could you please be more specific as to who you are refering? No names please, just what position "they" hold in UPS will do.

UPS has clearly spelled out precisely how we all are to do business for this company.

"They"(UPS) have clearly spelled it out in the current UPS Policy Book, the UPS Charter, the UPS Code Of Business Conduct, the various job training, job and safe work methods and the various Labor Agreements that have been agreed upon by the respective parties. Any time any UPS employee deviates from any thing in any of the above items is the time that we(any UPS employee) fails UPS, their fellow employees and themselves. When you fail yourself, you fail all of those that love you.
Sincerely,
I

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

They refers to anyone in a position higher than mine aka suits.

 

[Covemastah]

Dear thread participants,

In reference to the above they:
Please elaborate as to who exactly you are talking about. They is a pronoun that is used to refer to ones previously mentioned or implied. Could you please be more specific as to who you are refering? No names please, just what position "they" hold in UPS will do.

UPS has clearly spelled out precisely how we all are to do business for this company.

"They"(UPS) have clearly spelled it out in the current UPS Policy Book, the UPS Charter, the UPS Code Of Business Conduct, the various job training, job and safe work methods and the various Labor Agreements that have been agreed upon by the respective parties. Any time any UPS employee deviates from any thing in any of the above items is the time that we(any UPS employee) fails UPS, their fellow employees and themselves. When you fail yourself, you fail all of those that love you.
Sincerely,
I

I think you know who 'THEY" are,,the EVIL EMPIRE..

 

[Bad Gas!]

They are the ones who sign our check..They are the ones who give warning letters for not putting in an hour lunch....they, they, they...They are also the ones that bend the rules by (MGT) loading trucks, hiding pkgs left in building, they throw and mishandle pkgs when volume is flowing over....So, they are pkg sinners as well, but they judge the hourly to cover they's butt!!!

 

[Anonymous 10]

Dear thread participants,

In reference to the above they:
Please elaborate as to who exactly you are talking about. They is a pronoun that is used to refer to ones previously mentioned or implied. Could you please be more specific as to who you are refering? No names please, just what position "they" hold in UPS will do.

UPS has clearly spelled out precisely how we all are to do business for this company.

"They"(UPS) have clearly spelled it out in the current UPS Policy Book, the UPS Charter, the UPS Code Of Business Conduct, the various job training, job and safe work methods and the various Labor Agreements that have been agreed upon by the respective parties. Any time any UPS employee deviates from any thing in any of the above items is the time that we(any UPS employee) fails UPS, their fellow employees and themselves. When you fail yourself, you fail all of those that love you.
Sincerely,
I

THEY are the micro- managers you know them they are the ones not carrying the cardboard you know the one WE are carrying every day.

 

[soberups]

...My point is:
The status quo at UPS is a fear based culture and a deceptive approach to audits of any kind. The purpose of an audit is to examine, verify and correct a situation. Trying to influence the results is dishonest. It may give us all an opportunity to say "yeah us, we got a 98, 95 or whatever, but it does little to examine, verify or correct the situation, elements or practices that the audit is intended to....

The purpose of an "audit" at UPS is not to correct or improve a situation. The only purpose of an "audit" is to provide job security and the illusion of relevance for those performing the audit.

It is far easier to write reports and manipulate statistics than it is to produce results. This is why the EBO is targeting division and higher level management; we could no longer hide the fact that many of these individuals werent accomplishing anything that related to the efficient delivery of the packages.

Those who cant do it...manage it. Those who cant manage it...audit it.

 

[upsgrunt]

I've always said that if they want true measurement of true situations, then don't give out a "warning" that there will be an audit. Just show up unannounced and do the damn thing!

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

I've always said that if they want true measurement of true situations, then don't give out a "warning" that there will be an audit. Just show up unannounced and do the damn thing!

This is the best answer yet. It has always amazed me when they send us an ODS telling us that we have company.

 

[scratch]

I've always said that if they want true measurement of true situations, then don't give out a "warning" that there will be an audit. Just show up unannounced and do the damn thing!

I've always thought the "surprise audits" were a joke. When the auditers show up, the place is so clean you could eat off the floor. The Preload is all wrapped up early and everything looks so neat. Last week our District Operations Manager was in our Hub. He went to the 8:30 PCM in the other Center and made some comments about the lousy looking non UPS hats the drivers were wearing. By the time my Center's PCM started at 8:45, the management team had already went around and made our drivers remove their unofficial gear. The appearrance guidelines were once again ignored the next day, its back to wearing anything you want.

 

[Floridacargocat]

What is the definition and purpose of an audit?
An audit is an unbiased factual and credible report about a condition (or set of conditions) in a specific area of activities. The auditor submits this report to a person/institution which uses this set of data for an evaluation and decision.
The crux of this function is (and not only at UPS) that an audit is limited by its specific objectives as well as the inability of the auditors to influence the final decision for future (remedial) activities.
Another crux is when a preset number of audits has been issued (by higher levels for the purpose of "making the numbers") to be achieved within a very limited time frame which violates the principle of credible reporting.
From my more than 40 years in industry (not only UPS), an audit is a mirror of the actual situation and is an opportunity for improvement. An audit conducted with advance warning is like looking at a Potemkin's village and is a mirror with a lot of fog on it. It is useless and a waste of effort.
An audit is an opportunity to get facts and use them for the purpose of improvement, but it also goes deeper why the audit results are as they are. Do the poweres that be want to acknowledge this and want to improve this by changing certain basic work assumptions? Would that be in their interest? Or would it be used for "witch-hunting" purposes?
As long as the envelope of working conditions is not adjusted, there cannot be any improvement. It is a simple law of dynamics.
Once you change this framework (envelope), then conditions are changed and better results could be obtained. The limiting factors of this "envelope" are known, and the major restricting factor is "human intervention" of all kinds.
"Human intervention" covers factors such as "the will to work according to instructions/training as well as compliance with procedures", the realization of human weakness under stress, a system of using a workforce with lesser receptiveness to following a disciplined work attitude, and many other factors such as motivation (great words). However in my long industrial experience I have seen a decline in workforce motivation, especially on the lower levels (trenches) which cannot be compensated by the few who still see and know who pays for their weekly checks.
Improvement starts with getting credible audits, credible feedbacks for misloads (which can be conveyed to the loaders involved in a language that the loaders understand and can accept), credible action by higher levels, smarter working methods (not harder ones).
I have not had the opportunity to conduct audits in the area of repacking, but I see a lot of opportunites to work smarter and more efficiently. I see a lot of opportunity to reduce grievances by working smarter and wasting less time and efforts to settle all these grievances. I see a lot of opportunity to work safer by listening to the voices of the people in the trenches and correct deficiencies (and not safety committees as a fig leaf to cover insurance requirements and other paper-based achievements).

 

[pretzel_man]

I have always personally been against announced audits. I have been audited countless times and have done audits countless time.

When I audit a building, I know they are trying to impress me. I take that into account.

Even when they know I'm coming, I can tell which operations are better than the others. If an operation can't do the job, its difficult to make an audit look good.

I view the audit as cleaning up a little for company. If you can clean up in a couple of hours then you are in good shape.

P-Man

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

I view the audit as cleaning up a little for company. If you can clean up in a couple of hours then you are in good shape. P-Man

My on-car has the same philosophy when he does S&V rides. He says it is very easy to tell the ones who follow them methods all of the time and those who follow them only when someone is sitting in the jump seat.

 

[Highwayman]

Yes, to do a real audit they should just show up one day. Then you could hear the sphincters tighten.

 

[badpal]

Here is a question i always wondered about who the heck is keter ? Are they a division of OSHA or just some outfit UPS pays to do audits ?

 

[soberups]

I hate hypocrites.

A manager who would terminate an employee for "dishonesty" while at the same time jumping thru a bunch of ridiculous hoops in order to get himself a good grade on some audit...is a hypocrite.

Dishonesty is dishonesty. The entire concept of an "announced audit" is fundamentally dishonest at its very core, and makes complete liars hypocrites out of the management people who participate in it.

 

[pretzel_man]

I hate hypocrites.

A manager who would terminate an employee for "dishonesty" while at the same time jumping thru a bunch of ridiculous hoops in order to get himself a good grade on some audit...is a hypocrite.

Dishonesty is dishonesty. The entire concept of an "announced audit" is fundamentally dishonest at its very core, and makes complete liars hypocrites out of the management people who participate in it.

I don't know how many audits you have done, but I have done A LOT.

Again, while I would prefer unannounced audits. The auditor does not think it looks like this every day, so explain the dishonestly to me... An audit is only a tiny piece of operations ratings.

After an audit, I look at the numbers the day of the audit compared to others. Do you really think anyone is fooled? From my perspective, its like cleaning up your house. It shows you know how to do the job. Nothing more.

You study for a test. That doesn't mean you remember the material as well weeks afterward.

Audits have been done this way for 50 years. The world has not fallen apart.

P-Man