An interesting, but possibly unrelated, item. I post this as an example of mgmt making changes to make savings and making things worse, whilst the staff are ignored.
I live in the Home Counties of the UK (i.e. in a country that neighbours to Greater London) and we have noticed our postal delivery getting erratic and much later in the day - across the last number of weeks. I now read that (and here I edit down from the article but do NOT paraphrase):
The Communication Workers Union said the problem had been caused by postmen being given larger rounds to complete. The [area] delivery manager for Royal Mail, said it was trying to balance "cost and service".
The Union, said some rounds had increased by 200 to 300 drop points. "The normal time of leaving the office would be about 10:00 BST to get their deliveries finished by 14:00 BST.We've [now] got postmen not leaving here until 11:00 BST or sometimes 13:00 BST so it's been impossible for them to do a complete delivery of their mail."
[Area manager's name] said managers were now checking that routes had been planned correctly and staff were working at the appropriate rate. He added: "My anticipation is that we will have the routes back on an even keel by this timenext week."
So ... the manager made changes that did not work and caused problems for the customers and staff. Now they are reviewing it and hope to make it work in just a week? Hhmm, sounds like another manager that does not know his job and did not ask anyone that DOES the job before introducing changes. Had they thought of testing it out carefully before upsetting customers whose alternatives are minimal?
I'm glad they want to save money but there is always the point at which you meet the law of diminshing returns and very few managers seem to know where that line is these days.