To: Branches with Members in BT
Dear Colleague,
As has been previously reported, the Executive team has been in discussion with BT on both the short term resourcing needs and the longer term resourcing plan.
Meetings are being arranged to discuss the latter issue in the context of the Resourcing the Access Network Agreement and the terms of Motion 59c carried at this year’s Annual Conference (TIC).
It is clear that the service crisis openreach has inherited from Field Service needs to be addressed. Branches will be aware from previous correspondence that the Executive team had been pressing BT for the withdrawal of the contractors from reactive work.
The attached letter from Ian Flynn dated 24 October 2005 sets out how openreach will address a number of resourcing issues. There will be an increase of 1300 plus in the reactive workforce, some of which will be direct (as opposed to being via an agency) external recruitment. The Company has committed to working with the CWU to begin to address the lack of diversity in the workforce.
The Executive team wanted an assurance that details of the recruitment into openreach be circulated internally throughout BT so that members wishing a career change could apply. You will see the letter contains this assurance.
The resourcing on frames, including agency people doing LLU work and the agile worker project will be discussed separately and the Executive team has expressed our concern about the growth of the so-called agile worker population.
It will be noted that, as a result of the recruitment and rebalancing, the 470 contractors in the reactive area will be withdrawn with some being put back on proactive work.
In the medium term, there will be a greater flex between people on reactive and proactive work lessening the need for non-direct labour contingency in peak period.
Overall, the Company’s response is welcome as a first step in redressing the resourcing shortfall inherited from Field Service. The Executive team will, however, continue to pursue the Union’s policy in respect of overall resourcing.
Ian Cuthbert
Assistant Secretary
Employee Relations,
Access Operations and Planning
Mayfair TE, 41, Farm Street, LONDON, W1J 5RG
Tel: 07885 933444
E mail: ian.flynn@bt.com
Date: 24 October 2005
Mr I Cuthbert,
Assistant Secretary,
Communications Workers Union,
150, The Broadway,
Wimbledon,
LONDON, SW19
This letter sets out the intention of openreach in respect of resourcing its capability to deliver service to its customers across the industry. As the CWU are fully aware making the network healthier leads to improved reliability, improved service standards and reduced cost. Releasing this potential is dependent upon bringing the new organisation into a stable state where service standards are consistently met and targeted network investment work completed. Delivery of the plan also requires the maintenance of a safe and secure access network and operating environment.
The service delivered by openreach can be improved. The organisation currently has insufficient resources to manage demand. This gap is being bridged through the employment of an assortment of temporary engineers from BT contingency resources, contractors and other parts of BT. There are now no reserve contingency resources available for managing peaks in demand and so, when the weather is poor or service issues such as Broadband migration occur, the one flex point is lead-times which today remain extended with wide regional variations.
The access network is not as reliable as we require. Left unchecked increases in fault rate will continue as a result of more demanding services and the ongoing degradation of the asset. This year, to March 06, the annual fault rate will reach 2.18m representing a 7.5% increase over the previous year and 20% above QPB. Left unattended this will rise to 3.0m at March 08. Exchange frames show a similar trend and the fault rate there has increased by 21% year on year.
openreach needs to create the space to execute the service plan because currently daily service pressures overwhelm it. Therefore openreach needs the capacity to change. An overlay of additional engineers is required to bridge the current resource gap, to bring lead times to contracted standards and to build in the essential resource flexibility to maintain those standards. Incremental investment work is also needed to avoid the significant increases in fault rates that we expect to see as our network continues to degrade. Increased network resilience and reliability will allow us to sustain our service improvements and to avoid significant further costs. This will deliver an assured service experience that meets customer expectations, with important consequences for BT’s reputation and position in the market.
Success for the openreach’s service plan will be measured as follows:
The plan is to build an operating model that successfully manages openreach’ resources such that work stacks and lead times do not escalate out of control, whilst ensuring proactive work to improve the network asset is completed, enhancing service continuity, reducing fault rates and enabling more automatic servicing of requests. Quality of personal workmanship and personal ownership are the key tenants of change. Patch ownership to the level of second line manager will be the catalyst, ensuring clear and explicit personal accountability across the organisation.
The plan is also that the primary workforce for reactive work will be BT direct labour. This will facilitate a “pride in patch” philosophy, more control over costs and a reduction in the current annual cost of reactive work by replacing contractors with direct labour man-for-man. In extreme contingency situations contract resource would be utilised on reactive work from an identified partner source that is used regularly in this capacity to maintain skill levels. BT contract labour sourced from the named partners will be used for civil and build works together with BT direct labour as appropriate. This will enable more rigorous control over quality and quantity. openreach will treat those who supply contract labour as partners and focus on cost and quality in the customer experience and the engineering solution.
openreach will take action to ensure all of its people cherish the network as well as good service. The impact of quality of workmanship on fault volumes is proven but improvements have stalled over the past 12 months and a change of approach is required. There will be a code of conduct that underpins the BT values and emphasises the purpose of the openreach organisation. Key changes will include consideration of future incentivisation that will fully underpin the increased focus on quality, team working and efficiency; a single quality audit system; a single performance management system; transparent team objectives; and line management capabilities and technical skills will be improved. Patch ownership will be the catalyst for change ensuring that personal accountability is clear and explicit; all people will be required to ensure equivalence in their actions; the maintenance of good records will be rewarded.
Engineers will be encouraged to complete ‘on the job’ network uplift and this change to resource mix and behaviour will have a positive effect on fault volumes and reduce them by a further 200k in the period of the plan to the target number of 1.8m.
A key aspect of the recovery plan is the increased focus on fault reduction work, as opposed to fault repair work. We are proposing to increase our annual capital expenditure on Fault Volume Reduction from its current level for the next two years. This will require additional Contract Resource ( as described later) which will reduce as current Contingency workforces are able to return to Proactive work along with further payback from the Reactive teams during troughs of work, which we expect will be in the short rather than the long term. The two years’ additional investment in FVR work will reduce fault rates in the network, by 2008/09, to 1.8m p.a. from 2.2m (where it would otherwise be, if annual FVR work were limited to its current levels).
Importantly, we intend to deploy temporarily the equivalent of 300 people, resourced largely through overtime hours, for a period of 18 months, to remove our service backlogs on a one-off basis and to allow for the necessary training of our permanent employees.
We plan to increase resource in the reactive area circa 1300 through recruitment / rebalancing / redeployment. which will create a Reactive workforce of 13,400. These will be deployed into reactive work, allowing us to cut back on unnecessary engineering overtime and to release 270 expensive contractors. The intention is also to deploy a further 200 of the Incumbent Contractors off Reactive work and back onto Proactive workstreams.
The new employees will allow us, at the end of the recruitment period, to release 500 BT engineers, to do pro-active fault reduction capital work. Importantly, these engineers will be available to provide essential contingency resource and will ensure that we have the necessary flexibility to keep service levels under control when demand levels rise abruptly.
We propose to continue to utilise the flexibility of temporary resource for short term non sustainable activities such as LLU migration work, which is time limited and geographically dependent. This will not only enable us to meet the rigorous demands of industry and the regulator, but will to also ensure that BT employees are able to focus on the key priorities of service standards and completing targeted network investment work. As discussed I will arrange a separate meeting with yourselves to present more detail around the full range of resourcing activities within the frames environment including a review of the current the agile worker project
Two key issues that might constrain the plan were training capacity and our ability to recruit and retain sufficient numbers of suitable people quickly.
Training capacity will now be doubled from the current throughput of 50 people per fortnight, to 100 from 1st November, rising to 128 per fortnight in Quarter 4, if necessary. The improved use of ‘pole fields’ and reduction of actual course duration achieve this by running it over a longer day and over a six day week.
Recruitment is being accelerated by a range of initiatives including;
· Wherever possible additional engineering resource will be identified and capbadged to Reactive in the new organisation on the basis of skill and geography. Should this have the effect of potentially compromising service, we will consult with you on how this will be resolved.
· Creating a marketing campaign to BT people across all lines of business, including the current surpluses, known closure sites and career development moves using the Strategic Sourcing Centre of Excellence. We will also give serious consideration in other BT sites and functions where people would wish to make a career move into openreach, without compromising service delivery within any donating unit.
· Fast tracking an external recruitment campaign in the National and Regional press plus selected non-main stream publications to target a diverse population, against the regional profile. We welcome the CWU’s support in this and will discuss with you how best our joint aim of improving the diversity mix of the openreach workforce can be achieved.
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We will discuss with you the actual recruitment process as I think we jointly believe there is a need to improve on some of the processes previously used.
What makes this transformation plan different is the alignment of the workforce across all disciplines and grades, to one philosophy, one service plan and one set of objectives. The plan is the core of the organisation’s change agenda. As we have discussed, we are conscious of existing resourcing agreements notably the Resourcing the Access Network agreement and commit to discussing with you in the coming months how the contents of this letter impacts on this in terms of timescales, numbers, work functions and improved consultation.
Yours Sincerely,
IAN FLYNN