Mail-Room Policy Recommendations

Park University Mail service Department is situated in the underground of Parkville Campus. It is a body that is responsible for providing students and faculties with mail boxes. At Park University, it is required of both students and faculties to have a mail box on campus so as to know the recipient of incoming packages. They also offer work opportunities for students who are looking for a job on campus. My focus for this report will be on the employees. As an employee, mail-room is known for its diligence and hard work among the employees. Each employee tends to provide students, staff and faculties the best services and however, they make sure that their needs are met. Complaints was received from the University concerning the poor and ineffective services provided by this department but I find this disgruntling because each mailroom employees put in their effort in doing what was taught to them by their supervisors and doing their job accurately and effectively. I conducted a research using articles from other resources on mail rooms and my major focus will be on the mail-room employees and the importance of complaint avoidance from the University. I also interviewed one of my co-workers about the problems mail-room encounter and what should be done in order to elude them in the future. As a result, I found out that separation of duties among the employees, Effective communication, Effective supervisions, Punctuality and Employee training are the key components of avoiding mistakes, and complaints. The above mentioned are the alternate solutions that should be applied by the employees. There are several Departments at Park University and one of the departments that I conducted my research on was Park University Mail Services. Park University mail services aim at providing the highest quality and most efficient services to their customers. In my report, my main focus was on the employees. Employees at mail-room are responsible for performing a variety of generally routine tasks, such as receiving packages from different courier services, Entering data into the system, Forwarding student's mail, sorting mail, preparing mail for distribution and preparing mail for machine processing. The objective of these employees is to meet ensure that excellence services are provided to the students, faculty and staff and as well to make sure that they perform their tasks as employees accurately. There are numerous amounts of employees who work at the mail services and yet complaints have been made regarding the poor efficiency and lower productivity by these employees. As an employee, this department is the most hardworking department but there are some problems that need to be addressed and this will help increase productivity in the department. My duty as an employee is to put in my best and make sure that I assist in processing mail, entering data into the system and make sure that metered mails are taken out on time. In my findings concerning the poor efficiency and low productivity, the problem they encounter embroils non separation of duties which makes the employees reluctant to work because everyone does a little or no work at all and this has been an issue that Park U mail room faces and reversing these issues needs to be put into consideration by the supervisor. Moreover, ineffective communication, non-punctuality at work and inadequate supervision contributed to the problems they face as well. No amount of work could be achieved with all these issues and these issues could also ruin the reputation of the department. After considering these issues, I looked at ways that will help resolve the problems which would be further discussed. The purpose of my research is to provide subsequent solutions to the problems we experience at work and the importance of mistake avoidance in the future. The following illustrates my conducted research: 1. To determine the solution to our problems, we need to change how we communicate at work because communication is very important at the work. †¢ I used an article from 2012 which talks about effective communication at workplace. †¢ I also referenced a textbook from my management class that discusses on the importance of communication among the employee members. 2. Again, I research on the importance of separation of duties among employee members. †¢ I used an article from 2012 about separation of duties among the employees. 3. I also researched on the importance of supervision at workplace and I found an article from Ebsco by Jenkinson & Hilary on the importance and benefits of supervision and this article explore the concept of supervision and its implementation within a 4. Finally, after analyzing the researched information, I conducted a recommendation 5. Punctuality is another way of resolving the issues we encounter at the mail-room. Effective communication is very important most especially at the workplace because it provides the employees abilities to work well and to avoid inaccuracies. From my work experience at the mailroom, I observed that ineffective communication has been a major problem and this has led to so many mistakes. At times, we find it difficult to ask questions about either what we don't understand that involves shipping international packages or questions of which department to put the letter mails which they sometimes end up in a wrong departmental mail box number. According to an article published in Sept 2012, Indian Stream Research journal, it illustrates the importance of effective communication at workplace. Effective workplace communication is essential to the organizations' success. â€Å"Our communication skills help us to understand not just words; we share meaning, emotion, feelings and attitude, in a fundamental drive to communicate. This emphasizes the process of coming to understand and share each other's point of view effectively (Satpathy, 2012). † Furthermore, communication is an act of exchanging information. It is used to inform command, instruct, influence and persuade people (Rue & Byars, 2009). Effective communication at the workplace creates a way to deal effectively with customers and co-workers. Thus, this needs to apply in the everyday life of the employees at the mail-room as this help avoid making further mistakes in mails handling and will also increase productivity. Separation of duties is another key component of getting mails done in a very fast manner. In Berkeley News article about separation of duties, it is a powerful internal control and its objective is to make sure that duties are assigned to individuals in a manner that no one individuals can control a process or work from the start to the finish (Webmaster, 2011). Every Tom, Dick, and Harry infrequently makes mistakes and no individual is perfect and thus Separation of duties provides a complementary check by another individual. By assigning each employee a task such as helping customers at the window, forwarding undergraduate student mails, processing incoming and outgoing mails, receiving packages and sending email to students, faculty and staff about the arrival of their packages will help in getting the work done on time and efficiently. Apart from Park U, other universities and organizations use separation of duties at their workplace and this allows an opportunity for someone to catch an error before a transaction is fully executed based on potentially erroneous data. In addition, having adequate separation of duties diminishes the ‘opportunity' factor that might encourage an employee to embezzle although there is no such at the mail-room. I strongly suggest that we apply this method at our workplace so as to lessen employees reluctant to work and expecting one person to do the job. Poor Supervision leads to massive mistakes and thus should be avoided by the supervisors. Rather, supervisors at the mail-room should supervise their employees constantly and ensure that they are performing their tasks perfectly. According to the authors of Youth and Services article, they article explores the concept of supervision and its implementation within a work environment. The article describes and explores a process of staff development facilitated which involved providing supervision training to a group of new work practitioners (Jenkinson, 2009). However, supervising employees on a regular basis is very crucial at the mail-room because of the amount of work the employees do and how they put in their effort to avoid making errors. For example, the new employees at the office should be monitored constantly by our supervisors and also assist them by answering questions asked by the new employees. Punctuality is one of the mail-room policies and nonetheless employees always fail to abide by this policy. Being punctual to work has not only being a major problem among Park U mail-room employees but also Rockefeller University struggles with the same issue of punctuality among their work study employees. Punctuality is one of the key basic of knowing a strong worker and how dedicated he or she is to job. Many at times, we tussle with waking up in the morning and making decisions of whether or not to report to work and by the time we make this decision, we found our ourselves 15 minutes to work. One of our obligations as employees is to be punctual at work and to assist our customers with their needs of either mailing or receiving packages and also to ensure that we assist them to their satisfaction. As complained by the university, it is required of every employee to report to their respective work at least 5 minutes early prior to their time of work. Therefore, employees at the mail-room should abide the rules. As a conclusion, it has been proven that the mentioned issues in the beginning are very important and therefore should be taken seriously by the employees to avoid errors and further complaints by the University. As an employee, mail-room is known for its diligence and hard work among the employees. Each employee tends to provide students, staff and faculties the best services and however, they make sure that their needs are met. Thus, we should consider these issues we encounter in the office and make reformation as this would help prevent further complaints by either our supervisor or by the university.