Paul pays overtime

At the beginning of the year the drivers had noticed that the waiting times from customer enquiry to the job being done was rising. This was partly due to the absence of a colleague, partly due to rising demand. They were surprised that Paul had not suggested anything to correct the situation and so it fell upon them to come up with a plan. They negotiated for a temporary replacement colleague but found that it was several months before he could start.

Whilst they were waiting for this new colleague one of the drivers suggested that, for the time being, they do more shifts themselves to help alleviate the creaking waiting times and thus hold the service together. His colleagues agreed, aware though that this would significantly increase their workload but seeing that it would help the situation. The work they would normally have done during this time was largely displaced to out of hours but they did it anyway.

It was a great success. Waiting times more than halved and when their new colleague arrived things were in a much better shape. Neither Paul nor any of his managerial colleagues offered any thanks for their efforts but the drivers had come to expect this.

They put in their application forms for payment for these sessions. It was a full three months later that they eventually saw the money arrive in their accounts. At first they thought it was an administration error as the sums paid were so small. £40 an hour before tax for people of their qualifications seemed very low compared to what had been paid to others in the company in similar situations previously, even quite recently. And compared to market rates this was almost six times lower. But they knew that to complain was to appear greedy, especially in these times of austerity, and so they kept their counsel.

And Paul knew this and looked on from his office on the top floor and smiled.

The driver who had initially suggested all this extra work however, was saddened and upset that he had in effect made his colleagues do the work almost for free. Although the work had been done in normal working hours it had displaced other activities that still needed to be done and were, as often as not, done in the drivers' own time and moreover, the whole effort was on top of an already overfull working week. Upon enquiry - as usual - it appeared that there was nothing that could be done about this.

Morale had taken another kick in the teeth.

And Paul knew this and looked on from his office on the top floor and smiled.

Paul streamlines Special Parking Activity

After the brouhaha regarding the Zero Income Ration Calculator And Demonstrator of Inactivity Abolishment Negotiation work counting exercise had died down somewhat, the drivers thought that they might at least not hear any more about it for a while. They were wrong.

The first inkling that they had that the issue was far from buried was an email one of them received asking him to reduce his Special Parking Activities by almost half. A word of explanation here: the Special Parking Activities formed one part of the laborious time-counting that had gone on some weeks previously. they represented the part of the working week that supported the main activity of actually using the vehicles - counted under Driving Customers in Cars - and included such tasks as training Learner drivers, keeping up to date with new uses of the vehicles, marking exam papers for the Learners, auditing their own work, and of course parking up the vehicles. Paul had decreed that these activities should not exceed a quarter of the working week but he knew full well that in reality they took up more than this but the drivers took work home with them or did it after hours. They did this largely because they were interested or helping out colleagues and accepted the fact that they would not be paid for every last thing they did.

Now Paul wanted them to reduce the amounts that the Ration Calculator stored in it's deep, inaccurate electronic belly. The driver was surprised as he thought that his contributions to these various activities had previously been valued and he had not advanced any claim for more pay. He sighed, logged on to the Ration Calculator and checked how much of each he was doing. Using this he compiled a lost of non-driving activities that he could theoretically cut and sent them to Paul.

"Excellent!" replied Paul by email. "That is very helpful. You choose which combination you would like to amend, but of course this will not alter your working week template in the real situation."

"What does that mean?" queried the driver still unused to the language in which Paul traded.

"We need to ensure that all drivers have no more than 2.5 Special Parking Activities each," emailed Paul. "But naturally cutting these on the Ration Calculator will not affect the material pattern of you week."

"You mean you want me to delete the electronic reference to some of the work I do and yet continue doing it?" asked the driver incredulously. "Isn't that simply deceitful?"

Paul had no answer.

"And then next year presumably you'll point to the absence of these items as evidence that I am not working too hard?" continued the driver, by now incensed beyond belief.

Again, Paul had no answer. But he just smiled.

Paul's newest initiative

The Compulsory Training programme was progressing apace but Paul was a little sad to see that it contained only 23 items. Two more would make for a much nicer number and look better on his spreadsheet. He pondered his predicament.

Although his 'Clean Below the Ankle' policy regarding clean footwear in the cars, reinforced by rigorous annual updates, wasn't having quite the effect he had hoped he could not deny that his drivers weren't at least fully briefed on the issue. Nevertheless, he felt the subject could do with a bit more publicity.

And thus he created and sent out many emails commending the Brighter Efficient Engines scheme. This, he thought, would supplement the invaluable knowledge that the training modules behind the Clean Below the Ankle policy and had many potential spin-offs. Not least, he could create trainers of this scheme thereby creating more roles for the myriad of mini-Pauls within the organisation. BEE-trainers would have an exalted status. It was even possible that they would themselves spawn multiple reports on driver compliance. Paul envisaged a future where these Hostile Opposition to Nurturing Efficiency Yardstick summaries would be used as a 'name and shame' tool to drive greater uptake.

First of all the drivers were all sent an A3 poster to read as Stage 1 of their BEE training. There were lots of coloured charts and boxes of text explaining why BEE was such a good idea. In fact, some of the drivers wondered quite why so much justification was necessary if the process was indeed quite as useful as advertised. In one box there was a graph showing the impact of the introduction of BEE in a neighbouring organisation compared with one that had resisted its arrival. Strangely, it appeared that both lines showed a similar improvement in engine efficiency in the time that one of the two centres had used the technique. Paul however did not see this but saw only the fact that one line was lower than the other. That was evidence enough for him. He wasn't about to let rigorous scientific analysis get in the way of a good addition to his training spreadsheet.

The drivers were nonplussed. "We look after our vehicles already, Paul," they said. "How does this programme - teaching us what we already know - help in any way other than making us give up time to go on your courses when we could be doing core work?"

"I'm surprised and disappointed that you find the need to query an innovation that is designed to improve the lifespan of your engines," he countered, not really answering the question.

"But is there really much evidence that wearing gloves to check the oil level makes any difference to the lifespan of the car?" they asked.

In reply Paul pointed at the two lines on his graph.

The drivers shook their heads, realizing that they were getting nowhere, and forbore to comment further.

"Now - which of you would like to be a BEE-trainer?" asked Paul.

Paul runs a course

Every year the drivers had to be assessed to ensure that they were still capable of doing their job well and safely. The idea that they would ferret out a struggling colleague and deal with the situation themselves was quite outmoded. No, these days there had to be some managerial input into the process. This would make everything better. At least that was the theory.

The problem was that there were an awful lot of drivers. And it seemed that as soon as the assessments were completed, they were due again. Despite the drivers' best effort to stretch the time between these annual ordeals from twelve to fifteen or even eighteen months, this process of documentation collection always seemed to be the paperwork equivalent of painting the Forth Bridge. And now the government had decreed that the whole exercise should be even more detailed with the Enhanced Strengthened Assessment.

So Paul decided to delegate. It was one of his many talents. Several drivers would be trained in the mystic art of assessment and would be taught to count the uncountable. He ran a course.

Ten of the drivers had been persuaded to attend. The head driver, who had already been trained in the art, was leading the day and began by outlining the reasons behind the initiative and the main areas they would cover. The drivers then eagerly awaited Paul to come and give the next talk, setting the context in more detail and motivating them. They waited. And waited. The coffee cups were empty and the small talk had dried up.

The lead driver rang Paul's secretary to enquire politely if he was running late. "Oh, he's on an away day fact-finding mission in a nearby town," he was told. The driver apologised to the group.

The morning passed. They studied the seemingly endless types of Supporting Information that each driver would have to submit in their Reassessment Folder every year. It seemed never-ending. Copies of driving licenses, insurance papers, logbooks of journeys undertaken. Copies of complaints from passengers, reflections on these complaints, outcomes of investigations. Breakdowns, reflections on breakdowns, route cause analyses of the breakdowns. Feedback questionnaires from all one's colleagues, evidence of team-working, statements of good eyesight. And on, and on.

And then there was role play.

A character actor played the role of drivers with problems and attitudes quite unlike anything that the assembled group thought they would ever encounter. They struggled through the use of open and closed questions and discussed the role of the assessor in the resolution of any problems uncovered.

"Is this process supposed to be helping the driver concerned in finding ways to make his working life easier or is it more of an exam-like scrutiny?" asked one of the audience.

There came a long answer but no one was any the wiser afterwards.

"Are we supposed to be judge, jury, facilitator, counsellor or a combination of these?" they persisted.

Another long answer. Still not enlightened.

At the end of the day they were given certificates and told to go forth and assess. "You need to do between eight and twelve a year," they were told. "Each one should take a couple of hours of preparation, two to three hours of face-to-face time and an hour or two of reflection before writing the summary report."

"This is instead of some of our usual driving duties?" they queried, alarmed.

The head driver running the course smiled. "We find that weekends are probably best for this activity," he concluded.

Paul's Listening Week

The incessant edicts that emanated from Paul's office were beginning to irritate and worry the rank and file workers of the company rather and the number and volume of their protests could not be ignored even within the cosy recesses of Paul's secluded world. And this protest was beginning to irk him. At first, he had tried to ignore it. But the grumbling only grew. Then he tried pinning statements to the company noticeboard explaining one or other of the schemes.

Nothing seemed to pacify the ungrateful, ignorant masses however.

"Paul," they would say, "we are worried about your plans for more competition with local companies for specific forms of hire. It won't be a level playing field as they just take on the high paying, easy trips. Look at the local firm wanting to just pick out limousine travel. How will that affect our service? Are we to deskill, only to be found wanting when a limousine request comes in over a weekend, when they are closed?"

Paul shook his head.

"Car UK will help provide our customers with more choice," he began before being cut short by one irate driver.

"And this decision has nothing to do with the chairman of Car UK giving you £21,000 to refurbish your office last year?" he challenged.

Paul shook his head.

"And when the British Ultimate Passenger Association takes most of our cases of Ferrari hire, how are we to train future drivers on those vehicles? I understand that they won't be teaching any."

Paul shook his head.

"I hear that you are going to publish data on who is the best driver in each section," another asked. "Given that it is very hard even for us to tease apart the multiple variables that go towards identifying who is good and who is not - and we understand what these parameters mean - how do you expect the general public to cope?"

Paul smiled and shook his head.

And so the objections went on.

*

And so it was that Paul had arranged a week of sessions to 'listen to the whole range of opinions and feed them back to higher management within the Department of Hire'. The drivers gathered in a plush lecture hall and were surprised when Paul arrived with the head of the Sedan and Hatchback Agency in tow. What had she to do with all this? Especially as under the new plans her agency would be abolished. Was she here as an apologist for the new changes or as a conduit for their views. No one knew.

Paul introduced her to the nonplussed audience and then proceeded to fire up the computer on the podium to display the first slide. It was crammed with text.

"Oh no!" whispered one driver. "Death by PowerPoint."

"Yes - Killing me Microsoftly," agreed another.

And so began a half hour of slide after slide with explanations of how wonderful the new reorganisations would be. Then, finally, time for comment from the audience. They raised the same points as they had with Paul but it seemed that the head of the Sedan and Hatchback Agency had very selective hearing for she choose to reply to only a few and just smiled fatuously at the rest, whilst producing the same soundbites that she had used in the first half hour.

When the full hour was up, on the dot, the drivers were dismissed and filed dutifully out to return to work.

"When they said 'Listening Week'," said one as they left, "I didn't realize it was to be us who would be listening."