We use progressive discipline at UPS. Talk with, verbal warning, written warning, suspension, termination. Can I assume that an OLCC would equate to a written warning and that they can be used in the same progressive mannner?
Just curious--suppose the OP's co-worker had decided to falsify and recorded the P1 as delivered to beat the time commit? How does FedEx handle this?
An OLCC in Express is the written documentation of either a complement (positive) or counseling (negative). It is a permanent part of an employee's record. Items like late P1, missing airbills from a batch and improper labeling of picked up packages are handled with a written notice of deficiency, which isn't part of an employee's personnel file. Most places call them "nasty-grams" and they are merely placed into an employee's correspondence "box" by their manager for them (employee) to acknowledge (sign) and return to their manager. I require my manager to pull up "proof" of any nastygram that is given to me and more often than not can prove my innocence and return it unsigned (unacknowledged). Most Express managers don't go to the effort of researching what actually happened to cause some sort of service failure; they merely fill out a deficiency notice if one of their employee's numbers pops up in regards to a particular airbill number having some sort of service failure associated with it (it is always the employee's fault, NOT the system's fault).
A "written warning" is referred to as a Warning Letter. These are items which have both a direct impact on performance review scores and if enough are accumulated in a short enough time period can lead to involuntary termination. The overwhelming majority of these are used to eliminate employees that are grossly deficient in key areas of performance within the first year of their employment with Express.
Falsification is something which can lead to immediate termination within Express. I've known employees that have 6 months with Express try it and get fired and employees that have had over 20 years with Express get lazy, get caught and then end up quitting (knowing that they're going to get fired as soon as the "investigation" is completed). I also know managers which engage in some form of falsification on an ongoing basis and get away with it.
The Express PowerPad generally prevents the less bright from engaging in falsification, but it can still occur if one knows the system and for some reason wants to engage in falsification. There are two reasons employees engage in falsification: laziness and overtasking by managment. There is no excuse for laziness and the defense to overtasking to management is either to say no (to their manager) or start making waves to upper management (which I've done on numerous occasions). Managers will overload Couriers with P1, send them out knowing they can't possibly get it all off by the committment time then turn around and hand out a nasty gram for service failure. The experienced Couriers will start to pull off P1 from their truck to go onto an overflow route. With the belt tigntening by Express, they've tried to eliminate overflow routes so the pressure is on Couriers to make sure they don't leave the building with more than they can reasonably handle. Senior managers and district directors will in turn overtask their operations managers and they then cut corners to avoid getting a lower performance review score and having their annual bonus reduced. It is a vicious circle that goes all the way to Memphis and the Darwinian principle of survival of the fittest seems to apply - those best able to judge when and when not to cut corners move up the ladder.
If a Courier works by "Courier Best Practices" they don't have the opportunity to falsify, since the "process" inherent in CBP prevents any opportunity for falsification (thus part of the reason Express pushes CBP). Very few Couriers in practice follow the guidelines in CBP, since doing so costs precious time and reqires them to either have the memory and organization skills of a robot, or have too much time available to do their job. Express knows this, and it is part of the "nod and a wink" that accompanies all work practices. Officially, CBP is the guideline upon which all Couriers are evaluated against; in reality, if Couriers were to actually follow CBP 100% of the time, Express would have service failures galore and every Courier would miss their goal.
Supposedly Couriers are no longer going to be able go into the Express computer system (FAMIS) and manually update missing Proof of Delivery (PoDs). The PowerPad does occasionally "miss" recording a delivery scan, and employees at the end of the day go through their reports and manually enter a PoD code (COSMOS) to any airbill number so missing that "final scan". Most do it knowing either their PowerPad failed to record the scan, or they for some reason missed scanning a particular piece (when they had multiple pieces delivered as part of a single stop). They do this to head off getting the nasty grams. This is supposed to stop, supposed to. Access to COSMOS is supposed to be pulled for all Couriers and only CSAs and managers are supposed to have access to this part of FAMIS sometime in the future. Express will find out that its service failure rates will skyrocket if they in fact do this, since employees won't be able to "correct" their errors before the end of the day and the missing information shows up in the station level reports.
