[speaker001:] Clearly one of the issues we've got though, is t we're looking at... something like million pound overspend in C I S... for the calendar year ninety three... which we've gotta try and pull back, at least some of that. We worked out yesterday that probably the overspend in... er client services could be between a hundred and eighty two thousand... and half a million, not four hundred... depending on which scenario you take. Erm the worst scenario takes into account things like erm whacking in another two people in claims, another four in E W S erm
[Mike:] i if you go along with the... the current situation on volume increases erm and er the simple choice on those is you either pay... pay to cover the service levels or you let the service level deteriorate.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] Erm but I mean that's forecast for erm more or less now if the volumes stay as they are, so that's an issue. Erm we've also got an issue with erm... the post cock-up... and that's a technical term you're laughing at are you?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Erm...
[Robert:] cock-up
[Mike:] two people to go to John, erm because erm, apart from anything else it was agreed... John 's arm was twisted yesterday to take two people and g and the work... but the issue is is that the K doesn't, the issue is is that there is no budget anywhere for it... either here or down in John's area. And the reason being is that somebody thought that John was taking the work without having to take people, which he can't do. So John's now taking it on the basis that he takes budget with it so...
[Robert:] So they are going?
[Mike:] Yes they will be going. Ah I mean [sigh] right...
[speaker001:] Mary'll take them all [LAUGHTER] now []
[Mike:] Yeah, unfortunately erm...
[Jackie:] Does that mean Richard as well from upstairs or Russell, whatever his name is?
[Mike:] Russell
[Steve:] Russell
[Mike:] Ah I don't know if Russell's going, I mean that's something for them to sort out upstairs.
[Steve:] Yeah th they were the two people, it's our two part-timers... plus Russell.
[Mike:] Oh well that's what it is then, yeah. Yeah okay.... But you'll need to sort that out with Mary when she's back, she's not back till after Easter anyway.
[Sheila:] So when's that happening?
[Mike:] Well I'll leave that... problem for Mary to sort out. But it, we don't save any money from doing that now... anyway. In fact we lose money... either way.... Erm so that's,tha that that's now been done. Erm now potentially, if you totted up, and there's also the data integrity the other reports, which is the sixty K... overspend we talked about, now the question is do we spend that, do we spend that this year, what do we do? Now
[Jackie:] Sorry what reports are they?...
[Mike:] Well Phil knows what they are.
[Phil:] Well we've... we're gonna spend it now anyway. No I mean I've started giving reports out to the sections already
[Mike:] Yeah I, I know but
[speaker001:] Is that units?
[Sheila:] Units reports?
[Phil:] Yeah
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Phil:] on the data correction... exercise.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Sheila:] Oh
[Mike:] But the, the question is until you've fixed them they'll stay in... in exclusion right?...
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] Right, so you fix them just as quickly as you can fix them, but if that takes nine months it takes nine months, that's one of the views you can take on it.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] Erm the issue is is that potentially you could be goi we could've been going for four point three extra people... and we probably won't do that. But the ne the ne the other issue is that erm on the... Jason front, the overspend on the salary, we might well be able to adjust that down in terms of the overall salary review... absorb it within that... in July. Five grand across the whole we'll, we'll lose it somewhere.
[speaker001:] Oh what, the k the difference between him being an A and, and the budget being a C?
[Mike:] Yeah. Yeah. Okay? Erm on the other side there are some definite overspends which we've got to do some more work on. Erm there's the P W P five year thing which, which we've got to... erm... cover... for which we've covered as two F T E for the six months and then we'll need to review that after that. Erm... we've got the same sort of issue with excess relief.... And then there's the, the data integrity on units which is the fourteen we've already... made some er... nominal provision for which is
[speaker001:] Mhm
[Mike:] quote ten quotes people moving across. Erm, in addition to that there's the erm there's the U A three stuff in the first half of this year... which is fourteen people for four months, eight people for two months... effectively. Erm... then there's billing and collection... pensions conversion, regionalization all coming in late. Erm now the impact of those is twofold, one is that we've got the overspend on the data integrity and the U A three, cos it wasn't in the budget at all. And secondly the fact that it wasn't in the budget erm and the fact that they're late... means that we're not also realizing the productivity in other areas that we had anticipated... so we're gonna be some six months late coming in. Now... the potential overspend on the definite ones, the ones I just read out, is two hundred and eighteen thousand. But we reckon that in actual fact if you erm don't do the... we just dis discount the billing and collection and the pensions conversions and so on that we will actually get some benefits from the, the, the things that we've already put in place this year, we reckon we can reduce that overspend on that side of it down to about a hundred and eighty two thousand... erm because it's, it's nominal paper er transactions in a way. Erm... so really the issue is... we haven't made any decisions yet, these are the things we've gotta try and make decisions on, but we will need to be starting to think them before we get to June. One of the major problems we've got is that erm... the w I did some figures yesterday that, that... tended to suggest that... in fact our productivity performance overall is about two point seven at the moment even without having had in and without having units in and so on, so we have increased our productivity, marginally, despite the fact we've got temps in and we've got those... new business people. Erm
[speaker001:] Wasn't it in the budget the two point seven for the first two months?
[Mike:] Yeah but it's now gone up to two point
[speaker001:] And increases
[Mike:] eight. Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] Yeah. Erm... but the reality is that erm we would therefore need our budget to, in fact for the first half of this year, to have, well for the whole year, to have reflected the late delivery of the systems which would've, if we'd had that in the budget and we'd been projecting the whole budget at say two point six, our budget figure would've been somewhere in the region of another eighty to ninety thousand higher than it currently is... for this first quarter. Erm so in actual fact we'd've been there or thereabouts had we not made the budget assumptions that we did. Now one of the major issues that we're concerned about of course is the overtime erm which is, if you review the last three months of the overtime which we did the other day, erm... we obviously, we spent the annual... budget erm allowance. One of the things that we need to, to work out, and Mark 's gonna do some work on that and, and Maureen pro primarily... to identify that erm... we're spending about thirty five, thirty six K a month over at the moment. Erm now there's two questions really, one is is that partly to offset the erm lack of productivity that we had anticipated in the budget. So in other words is our F T E consistent with where we actually are rather than where we thought we'd be... erm or have we got erm... you know er the Parkinson's law, been operating with the, the overtime, people are used to doing it and therefore they keep doing it and so on. One of the other impacts we need to work out in fact is the... er effect of the overtime as being worked in quotes, by all the quotes people not just the temps, because that's gonna be a significant chunk. If those, all of those contract temps are regarded as full time people it looks like full time people are working overtime, which is why I asked you the question yesterday... erm what's the overtime bill for quotes alone. Cos we've got a hundred percent hundred percent increase in... volume
[speaker001:] Yeah
[Mike:] in quotes.
[speaker001:] And th th the contract people, if they are working overtime, are, are paid the, the premium rates
[Mike:] Oh right yeah Yeah.
[speaker001:] So it's, it's costing us
[Mike:] Yes it is costing us, yeah.
[speaker001:] time and a half.
[Mike:] But the point is is that for everybody else there was, there is some assumption that we'd be working off of post driven erm... response, okay? So if you got more post in, or your productivity in the servicing sections is down, from two point seven it's down actually at two point six is what we're achieving, we're marginally out. But the, every hour of overtime worked in quotes is in fact an hour actually on our budget, it isn't just a pr proportion of it on our budget... which is what you've got everywhere else. So
[speaker001:] No it's not entirely true cos we did have a budget for overtime
[Mike:] Yeah but i if you're gonna go over by a hundred percent and you've got people there working overtime
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] significantly... every hour that they do on that is gonna be signific is, is not budgeted for cos you've got fourteen people there who weren't budgeted for at all.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] So when you get ten of them working overtime, and that, those ten people weren't budgeted to do any overtime.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] So we need to identify to what extent the o the quotes problem erm is cau is, is skewing the figures primarily to be able to get a forecast view of, okay what's the overtime likely to do over the year? I mean as long as it, as long as the graph... is reshaped rather than the massive overspend cos at this rate, we're gonna be spending out er three hundred thousand pounds over... just on overtime... er which we obviously can't afford to do. Erm but that's if you just progr project forward where we are cos we... used up in, in three months what we should have done for the whole year so you've only gotta do that, so we've done a hundred thousand pounds... this first quarter... and if you've four more, three more quarters there's another three hundred thousand pounds over budget. The point is, one of my points is that two things are, are likely to happen. One is that the, the impact of quotes and the other improvements coming through in the second half of the year will reduce some of that impact anyway... and also that that hundred thousand pounds overspend is sig is over-skewed because the proportion of quotes work in there is actually making a, making a difference too. But we need to know by how much. So what we're trying to do is get a picture of, okay, what's our, our best guess scenario, what the whole year's gonna look like.
[speaker001:] We should have that in a few minutes on the, the quotes side, Mark's gonna bring them in to me.
[Mike:] Yeah okay, fine. Erm so I think we've gotta look at that right across the board though, we've gotta know that in actual fact we're covering it temporarily, erm or aren't we covering it temporarily.
[speaker001:] I think all the work that we did indicates that there... the productivity is one issue, that unless you're doing the two point eight or whatever's in the budget, you know, we're not gonna get near it. But the other thing is the work that we did on, all the hours... that er aren't available on the team
[Mike:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] and that isn't gonna go away unless we
[Mike:] No it isn't, it isn't gonna away but when you go back to these figures... we've actually been working, if you wo if you accept that there's been, there's no change in our situation apart from auto-offs and units
[speaker001:] Mm
[Mike:] primarily
[speaker001:] As from now?
[Mike:] As from now. Well th since
[speaker001:] Right yeah
[Mike:] since December
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] we should be able to maintain the performance that we've done prior to December... cos everything else should be equal. Right? With
[speaker001:] Yeah
[Mike:] or without the T As and, and all, with all the other bits and pieces. So what we need to be able to identify is that,al although we will gain... the worst scenario ought to be that whatever we lose in terms of auto-off reports and units reports to some extent we should be gaining by the improved productivity overall. So let's just say it breaks even. So our performance, in terms of F T Es per thousand pound, per thousand item, should be running more or less along at the November December level. Right? Now what we've got here, if you look at the F T for ten thousand in force policies, we've got a significant jump in January and February... at a time when our budget posting was down below budget. Now that's fair enough because we've actually bunged more in in terms of testing, we're covered in testing, and we've got temps who are less productive, so to an extent we, we, we, we... ou our budget did expect that... bump. What we should expect though is that it comes back down to around the three point five mark for the year. Now if that is true... then we ought to be able to re- forecast a year getting a reasonable assessment, okay, on what's that going to do. So what I'm saying is that... although there will be an overspend, it shouldn't be massive cos the overspend would effectively be the hump... right at the beginning of the year.
[speaker001:] I don't think it's as simple as that... because at the time that we were doing the budget, we were doing it really in September, and most of those other cate categories of work, apart from like auto-offs reports and things, weren't having an impact. And all, all the other things we've listed out that have taken up time of the team weren't being done in September.
[Mike:] We were doing other things last year. We were doing other things. Loads of other things.
[speaker001:] I don't think I don't think simply by looking at auto- offs reports or E D S R work is going to solve our problems in time do you?
[Mike:] But I don't I don't s
[speaker001:] No
[Mike:] I haven't seen anything that, that actually says, suggests to me that you've got another, any other special cause... between now and last autumn. Othe the only other thing that could be in there would be an increase in post, fundamentally.
[speaker001:] Which we haven't had.
[Mike:] Which we haven't had.
[speaker001:] No.
[Mike:] Well we might be having in, in March if eastern region's anything to go by, cos it's had a twenty four percent increase, then it might be a, a double blip, a blip under and a blip over, which would therefore f it would therefore follow that your erm your workload level is gonna be consistent. What we don't know is whether March is a start of a new trend upwards above budget, that's a different scenario... cos then you can say okay, just like we talked about with claims and E W S. But if you take the, the servicing sections overall, what we should be able to say is that look okay we're gonna have a delayed kick in of improved productiv because it, productivity cos of new systems that are helping us, whether it moves us from two point six to two point seven to two point eight is arguable, and we won't know that for sure until we get there, but we shouldn't have is deterioration. I don't e I don't see any reason why we should have deterioration. Cos the work that the T As are doing now are just different projects to the one they were doing before. I mean you've had Sue, Sue for example tied up on and all those sort of issues, Bob 's been dealing with pr pension conversions and stuff like that for, for months on end, so we've been dealing with other projects, all that's happened is the work has been redirected onto a different type of project. Now we've lost a lot of resource... erm in the clerical area, in this first quarter,t t to release people to go and do testing work we've taken on temps. Now the temps an and the two new business people for example have definitely had an impact on our ability to be as productive as you normally expect to be. That's why I would expect to see... and we planned to some extent, we may have under-planned... an increase in costs. But I don't see any reason why we shouldn't ever get back to where, to the last quarter, if you're excluding December, of... ninety two. That should actually be our benchmark, I see no reason why we shouldn't be able to achieve that. Now the very simple thing is if we just stop doing this other project... and get the T As back down on to, if, if we need to do that. But I don't see any reason why our... that we shouldn't have the ability, as a man to making management decisions, that makes the productivity and cost profile achievable of at least what it was before Christmas.... Now that's all I'm saying. Unless of course we have a significantly increased level of erm... of post and then that changes the scenario quite again. Now... we're planning to do a, we don't wanna do another budget, re-budget forecast until June July, we, cos it, we don't need to do one for this... bu any budget year starting July, we're gonna work on the calendar year. Erm... but one of the things that we, that we will need to do is actually to review the overtime for the last three months to say okay, what's it actually been spent on... so that we can start to er make sure we've identified the reasons for it. If the reasons for it are accommodating the release of people to, like Pam, Lewis and Ron and people like that whom we've released, erm and the experienced temps... then you can at least say when they come back... then that position should revert back to the norm. So
[speaker001:] Some of that's been done though hasn't it? From what... erm we did for yesterday. Mm.
[Mike:] Some of it, things like the fax service
[speaker001:] I think
[Mike:] which we certainly weren't doing, were we, in the last... last year er review... and the mechanics of the fax service we already thought that took up a lot of hours you know just putting, faxing them through, receiving them
[speaker001:] But then you, that outweighs No that ma that's saving us time the, the time wasted on phone calls doesn't it? Yeah. I mean at least when you're getting the faxes and it's being recorded as working there's an enquiry
[Mike:] Mm we weren't convinced. When we worked it out as an average that the sheer monitoring and chasing quotes or following up quotes erm and just preparing the documentation, we weren't convinced that was the case at all.
[speaker001:] You'd expect the productivity to fall wouldn't you, if you were actually operating a fax service because you'd save, you'd take more time to monitor it
[Mike:] Er yeah
[speaker001:] whereas the exact opposite's happened in west, the productivity on the section with the It can't. fax service has shot up, whereas the other one I think it should shoot up. operating a I do. normal service has gone down, so [tut]
[Mike:] Mm. I don't see any reason why it, why it shouldn't do. Why it shouldn't improve it. Because A you're not wasting the time, you're not worrying about the post sort, you're getting the stuff quicker, you've got the thing logged in and logged out... erm so to, to a great extent, I mean er we should be ab I personally think that we should actually s be trying s we should be expecting to see an advantage but let's just take that as... as, as, as neutral so that you haven't got a er a worsening situation and you haven't taken adva taken advantage of any
[speaker001:] Mm
[Mike:] er have any advantage in that. We're also running erm... without, we must be running without or we've got a significantly reduced level of chase-ups because our turn- rounds are, in most areas, are significantly better than they were. And th and we've sustained that now for several months... erm much more so than we did when we did the thing at the end of ninety one. Erm now okay I accept that erm what you're getting now or starting to get through in some areas is a higher degree of expectation, but if we're not achieving that then I think it's something to do with what we're, the way in which we're, we're operating rather than the fact that it isn't achievable.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] Okay? So all I'm saying is, if we're not achieving that we need to go back and look at the way in which we're operating the fax service, have a chat with erm Phil's people or Jackie's peo see if there's any differences that we can take advantage of. Are we er are we, you know, gilding the lily?... If, cos if we are, we can't afford to.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] It's as simple as that. Erm so I... all we're trying to do now at the moment though is, is to, to operate from the point of view of saying look, if you actually take all these things into account, we shouldn't be worse than we were... ultimately, once these systems have bedded in, we're doing more checking on letters for example th than, than we w we won't have to once we've checked through the first two months of auto-offs, and we're getting used to the new reports and so on and that sort of stuff, so we expect there to be a blip, but you would expect a learning curve in anyway. That's what I'm saying. So once we're through that we need to be able to say okay, if there is a significant shift in the mix of work, then we need to be able to quantify exactly what that is.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] Okay? But I'd've thought that, that generally speaking, we should have been able to at least hold the line. Cos if we haven't then all of our assumptions into why we're doing things like auto-offs and it improves the outgoing costs and then we've got better reta better information and better screens and all that sort of stuff, I mean it blows every single assumption we've made in a way. You know that you've got, the fact that you can get current statements at the press of a button from July onwards, we should be able to say that means that on the teams that haven't gotta control the work going round to quotes and back again, having it typed and back again,
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] there should be improvements in those areas.
[speaker001:] That, that should surely improve turnaround times. Which yeah which are already going down anyway
[Mike:] It won't, it won't improve turnaround times generally speaking on the quotes area cos that's kept separate....
[speaker001:] Doesn't that affect teams? It will it will im Yeah cos improve the overall
[Mike:] yeah. It will have an improvement but I, I think we get that almost for free. But it, well what it will do is it will actually mean that you haven't, shouldn't have to worry so much about keeping logs of what you've sent round and, and so on.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] So all I'm saying is that that's what we should expect to see. Now the r the truth is, what we've gotta now check out, is actually is that reality, is the reality... wildly out. Cos if it is, how much are we gonna have to pay for it, and why and what can we do to try and bring it back in. And that's what we've gotta try and do in the next, next few weeks really. And monitor it very closely. Erm one interesting point about overtime and temps er generally is that temps apparently unl are costing us around about fourteen K with overheads... which is a lot more than I... believed to be the case. Er and Mark was saying to me yesterday [something makes a beeping noise]...
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Erm [LAUGHTER] Mark was saying yesterday that, unless you're erm going to be getting overtime done erm by supervisors, in which case temps are cheaper, you're better off using overtime er clerical staff... than you are getting temps in. So it's, if you're overtime is at the grade C level, or the workload is at the grade C level, then you're bet it's cheaper to get overtime done than it is to get temps.
[speaker001:] That's the agency temps I presume?
[Mike:] All temps according to Mark. There will be the very few exceptions.
[speaker001:] Should we not also still go for the, if we can, the one and a half times they work Saturdays? That'll make it even cheaper, instead of double time.
[Mike:] No well what we said is we're gon gonna scrap Saturdays unless we s consider it to be... critical and unavoidable on the basis that, if they, they can work Saturdays if they'd rather work Saturdays than in the week, but that's their choice not ours
[speaker001:] But then
[Mike:] they get pa they do it get paid for time and a half. Yeah
[speaker001:] Right. Is, that's the decision from now on is it? Well we, we're saying that now are we?
[Mike:] Yeah, I think we should say that, well really, unless we've got anything scheduled in the next week or two, let's get them out the way
[speaker001:] Does that apply to E W S as well? We've got, we've got two in er April April.
[Mike:] Well then let's... fill in April, then I think we should actually... make sure that we're comfortable that is essential and th that there is overtime being worked there that couldn't have be worked in the week. You know I mean okay talking vast
[speaker001:] I mean there's the argument I know people vary with their opinions but... is it more productive on a Saturday? I think Yeah that's the way mine tend to think it's more productive on a Saturday. I think so. Mine are exactly split. Some think it's a waste of space and others think, you know, it's er
[Mike:] Well in er I think you've gotta weigh up the p the productivity element against the cost, cost of it. cost effectiveness
[speaker001:] I think it must be easy to plan mustn't it if you know you've got that top number of hours from looking at what you've got
[Mike:] What... essentially what you need to do how to do is if you wanna be able to work Saturdays we need to be able to prove that in fact pound per, per item of post... on a Saturday is cheaper than... because the productivity in the week will be lower therefore and even at time and a half, the cost of doing an hour's overtime for the work you get out in the week is, is less productive than doing double time with what you get out on a Saturday. If that can be proved then we've got a case. If it isn't then what we should then be saying is no week time over no week time work and just all work Saturdays... if you see what I'm getting at. If we can actually demonstrate that, but you've gotta see a significant improvement in your productivity on a Saturday to make it worth your while.
[speaker001:] But I think it does doesn't it? By the volumes Yeah
[Mike:] Prove it.
[speaker001:] they produce. Yeah. Well we've got plans, Mark you know produced plans with productivity for Saturdays alone.
[Mike:] In which case then we should be able to say that Saturday working costs X... X pounds per item, and in the week it costs Y pounds per item. If X is cheaper than Y then you've got your case. Then you ban the weekday overtime.
[speaker001:] Is there certain work there that has to be done during the week and can't wait till the weekend?... It will just come down to organization really won't it? Between the teams.
[Mike:] Well I think it's an important issue, we need to sq we need to squeeze every, every pound out that we can if we're not to... if we're not to affect our service level. But the o the one thing I wanna say is that erm we need to do all we can to keep the c the over-run down to as low a figure as possible, and that's our job. Bob's already indicated that he doesn't, he wants to do everything he possibly can to avoid us having... to affect service levels... okay, and obviously the overtime is the one thing that really is, stands out as being the issue... anything else cos I mean our salary costs are there, there or thereabouts erm... with the temps in it, erm we know we've got erm some temps. One of the issues is we're not quite sure whether we've got... a change in our planned... spend, which is what makes the, the comparison against budget look as bad as it currently does, or whether in fact... we genuinely are gonna over-run significantly....
[speaker001:] So what does that mean with us doing with overtime at the moment then?
[Mike:] Sorry?
[speaker001:] Cos we're, we're averaging what, two hundred hours per team per month? Mm.
[Mike:] Well I think you, you, you've got, well you've got, if you're gonna work overtime, you've got to make sure that your productivity justifies it. That it isn't just to catch up with unproductive people.
[speaker001:] Yeah I'll ask supervisors to do everything by batch as opposed to allowing X number of hours, but then on top of that, saying alright you've got thirty hours this week
[Mike:] Mm sure.
[speaker001:] allocate it how you want.
[Mike:] Yeah. I think it does mean though that issues like erm long term sickness erm the issue that you've got with the two people in your patch, one of whom might go to the help desk, you need to get that resolved P D Q so you can say well I've reduced my h the temp over budget by one. Okay? So that then we can actually get somebody in there that can do the job properly. And then we'll have to deal with that other one and er and, and resolve that one way or the other and make, make sure we've done that reasonably... reasonably quickly, either g sending her back to new business or er trying to find another position for her if she can't actually cope with that.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] Erm... the J C one we'll have to try and deal with that again as a separate issue but I don't, I mean the amount of time we're losing from high levels of sickness we talked about a c couple of meetings or so ago, about... the absence levels with some people, we've just gotta make sure we crack that on the head, we're just haemorrhaging money, the fact that it is not just hours it's money.
[speaker001:] We should be getting another one out soon shouldn't we, end of March?
[Mike:] Yeah there's no reason why you can't ask Trudy for an update now, you don't have to wait for Tr for Trudy's report. If you want updates on those key individuals then let's get some. But let's make sure we, we can make, make a k key point of that.
[speaker001:] Did you do anything with the erm names we gave you for nil absence?
[Mike:] For nil absence? No I haven't done anything with that yet. Erm... we, we can do.
[speaker001:] Is that over ninety two? Well over the... the Since the last calendar year from It was last year wasn't it? during ninety two. Yeah. ... So what are we doing on the overtime then, Saturdays, at the moment?
[Mike:] I
[speaker001:] Are we gonna go away and work out how much it is?
[Mike:] Yeah I think, I think what wh er you do need to have worked out in, in your own minds and justified it what your plans are in terms of u realizing the extra resource... whether it be by temp or by overtime. But the w clearly, in, in budget terms, we haven't got any left... for the rest of this year... now clearly then we that means we're gonna overspend. The question is by how much.... Now
[speaker001:] But we have to keep in mind that we're not gonna let service levels deteriorate so
[Mike:] We don't wanna l no. But I think, but I do think it does mean that the first thing we say is that the work is more important than some of, maybe some of the, the nicer to have three year projects at the moment. And that's gonna have to be some of the things that suffer. If for example you've got a problem with productivity in your patch, erm because of the, the reasons we've talked about, it does mean that perhaps you need to say to whoever has been, is off and doing other projects that they'll have to stop doing that until you've got the productivity up... till you can release them back again. I think they'll have to recognize that it's gonna be roll your sleeves up and... we're go we aren't gonna be able to do all of the things we wanted to do, and that's the price we're gonna have to pay.
[speaker001:] Will that extend to things like the team reports, branch reports?
[Mike:] I think we just make sure we deal, make those as effective as possible. And if, if, if that major issue then bring it back here and we'll make the decision okay we won't do any more till we're
[speaker001:] I think those, those were some of the things weren't they s I don't know... I mean we asked Geoff about... the end of month reports, you know? And they, I don't know what you'll think, but they reckon they spend at least two to three days average in the first week of the new month purely... doing new reports. sounds excessive No Fax reports, C F R reports C F R reports you know by the time you add all that time up it's high.
[Mike:] Well I did say to, to Nicholas that we would start to be looking at whether they're successful or not.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] Before you stop doing a C F R report you've got to prove they're a waste of time.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] In much the same way as we've got... we've just gotta go away and do some questioning... ourselves... erm get amongst it an say okay can we do some of these things more effectively? If the fax is taking a l a longer time then there are some issues we need to pick up with that. But clearly we've got the charter commitments and we need to make sure we fulfil those. Erm... one of the issues is going to be is whether or not we can afford to improve the level of the commitments... apart from adding things... as we go through. If we can't we can't, it's as simple as that. But erm I mean th th the debate yesterday was, was... as, as budget issues always are... I mean when you're talking about budget no matter, even in boom years you're always still talking oh we haven't got enough money... erm but it was positive in the sense that it was A we're coming off the back of some good performance, and that's important to remember, and all I'm saying is there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to maintain our performance, even if we can't improve it in the... next two or three months erm from, to where we actually think we should have been given that the systems come in last year. Er so what I'm looking for is to try and see that we do all we can to make sure that the second half of ninety three we take full advantage of everything that we've got so that we do actually rapidly increase our productivity in the second half of the year. And our job's gotta be to tr I, I suppose really to try and move anything that gets in the way of achieving that. If you can release a temp, then let's do that....
[speaker001:] What about the situation on claims then? You mentioned at the beginning about
[Mike:] Well that's potentially, er no decision's been made as yet to review that budgeting exercise and I think erm... that's likely to be the position for the next month or two... erm so I would expect them to, to be doing their overtime levels as, as they currently are. Erm the one issue on E W S Ian is erm, there's two issues really... I happened to see your draft note to me out there
[Ian:] Oh you've seem it?
[Mike:] Yeah. Erm you wouldn't have... you wouldn't be releasing Michelle back and losing... losing her to testing.
[Ian:] Cos that's something which Jane seems to think will happen. She says she badly needs
[Mike:] Oh you see if they want her back to testing they've gotta pay for the resource to er for us to, to, to recruit somebody else in the meantime. And whether it's Michelle we release back is another issue.
[Ian:] I didn't name names in the thing in case anybody saw it in case you
[Mike:] No it's up to us to, to decide how the best way to handle that is. But there is budget in the testing resource budget to be able to accommodate for cover... we would then decide how best to handle that.
[Ian:] Okay.
[speaker001:] I've got Lyn who's due to go back for a month erm end of May for most of er June, upstairs
[Mike:] Then you should get the temp and the budget to cover it.
[speaker001:] Right.
[Mike:] Okay? That's what their... and you make sure you get it.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Mike:] Okay? Erm the, the issue is to make sure that you've got people that we, that are up there and, and temps like Lawrence and so on, that we don't lose that we can actually utilize....
[speaker001:] Do we know when Michelle might be available to join E W S?
[Mike:] I asked erm Ian yesterday to try and give me the dates so I, I'm, I expect him to come back to me today with some idea on that. It should be before Tracey goes.
[speaker001:] And what about overtime on Sa I mean at the moment some of them are working during the week and Saturdays and they need that to maintain the sort of service level that we're doing at the moment.
[Mike:] W well the only issue for you is whether or not you can, you're in good enough control there to be able to say can you... we need to be within the four to six banding, okay?
[speaker001:] Erm I think I am at the moment aren't I?
[Mike:] Yeah
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] you're down un down as four according to the la the last one I got.
[speaker001:] So I could let it slip slightly?
[Mike:] Well you, you can actually cut down some of the overtime maybe, and you need to review that and that's, you need to make that decision.
[speaker001:] I've put a lid on it anyway
[Mike:] Yeah
[speaker001:] they're not allowed to do more than ten hours each.... So I then, I don't stipulate whether that's during the week though or whether that's at the weekend because I, I agree with what's been said about they're, they're more productive during the weekend cos they don't get the interruptions
[Mike:] Mm.
[speaker001:] Mm. so... but I agree, I mean you could start trying to look at it and cost it Well they don't get the interruptions in the evenings, or shouldn't do. No, I think they're more tired and it's... I think it tends, tends, things tend I think you're right, they're just from the day do tend to drag on don't they? Mm. Weekends they're fresh, they're more likely to Whereas on, on Saturdays it's easier for supervisors to say okay well this day we're gonna be doing This is wha, yeah arguments
[Mike:] In which case there's more to be said for actually not, for doing less, less in, in the week
[speaker001:] During the week yeah.
[Mike:] even at double time so we need to check that out. If that figure's justified though then I'll bat on that basis. Cos the important thing is is not so much the number of hours as the, the, the affecting on, the effect on the cost....
[speaker001:] So what happened about time and a half? Are we still going for that?... Well I told my lot to... whatever they do on a Saturday, put it down on Monday and that way it'll automatically get paid at time and a half. So yours are already only being paid time and a half? Well for this Saturday onwards, yeah. done that. Well I sort of gave them a choice, do they want to nominate who does overtime or do they want to have a cat or do they want to pay, get paid less and they said they'll get paid less. I gave them a choice.... We all need to be consistent I think don't you? Mm Yeah. Yeah
[Mike:] I think you need to check out those figures first, before you make a decision on it. Cos it might be that it's more productive. But the question that mi will be raised, depending on, is why aren't we that m that productive ordinarily? Is it just because there are no interruptions?... Erm that's what we need to find out I suppose.
[speaker001:] I just got these, the quotes figures here... we, first three months of the year we were budgeted for six hundred and eight hours overtime and we a actually did sixteen hundred. A thousand hours? A thousand hours er i i i hundred and sixty seven... hundred and seventy percent increase. Any idea what cost that is? Well it's equivalent to an another two and a half people.... But that's on overtime rates so, no I don't know I haven't, well I can probably work it roughly Two and a half that's about... that should be about seven or eight thousand won't it? At least.... Is that, there,tha that's, that's e so that's just the extra amount? Thousand hours extra, yeah Yeah. over three months. So... so that's thr that's almost three times what you were expecting? It's er yeah two and a half... hundred and sixty percent higher than, than I would expect. Yeah.... That's the, that's for... every month? No Ju ju just That's over the three months. One quarter of the year. That's over the three months. Well it, the difference, I can tell you what the difference is... ten grand. That's how, that's how much my budget is overspent er ov... overtime is overspent.
[Mike:] Right. So our variance is seventy three so take that out that's sixty three... from our variance overall the rest of the patch is sixty three. But again we also need to work out how much has been spent on claims and E W S on... on work which is er higher than budgets but we can say okay, that's not a direct result of deteriorating productivity, that's a direct result of, of problems we've got with temps and so on, that's a problem we've got with increased, increased work levels. So I need to be able to get down to actu that's when you, supposing that comes down by another ten K say, so then we're talking about fifty K, thereabouts, overspend in the... main area, in which case to work out what's caused that, is that directly attributable to the... the inputting of the systems. If it is then we should be able to say okay, as we come clear of the systems, we should actually be, that should be just a one off, special cause for that period.... Anyway Maureen'll be... trying to work out some, some of the, some of the issues so you... expect that.
[speaker001:] How were things on Friday then? I mean did you see her after Friday's meeting?
[Mike:] Yeah
[speaker001:] And were they were they that wildly out or?...
[Mike:] Well this is erm... as I say we, we, we could've been somewhere in the region of two hundred and fifty thousand just on the I T issues alone.... But it doesn't actually account for all of the overtime that we've spent... not directly anyway. A part of that obviously I think is going to be that there was an expected higher level of productivity than we've actually achieved, cos you know in January I think in, in Christine's area for example, to start off with I mean er er er productivity plummeted... erm... and it's now, and she changed the system and, and one or two other things. And you've seen for example in central, Sheila, that their, their productivity level has improved
[Sheila:] Mm
[Mike:] almost week by week. So what we actually are possibly seeing is ourselves coming out of the trough so therefore part of it's a training curve, but we do need to see that training curve start to come down and get back on to a level... but we don't know where the level is, that's what worries us at this stage.... And that's what we want to make sure we are in control of.... Okay. It's important but I, I wouldn't... I don't want to er... get carried away with the fact that we're not performing well because we are performing well.... Okay erm... do you have any questions on that?... No?
[Sheila:] No.
[Mike:] Okay erm just move on to erm... some items from the breakfast meeting this morning. Firstly, tomorrow... you will see, I'm told, a man in a rai raincoat walking around the offices erm
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] a guy called Mr [LAUGHTER]... maybe he's wearing a trilby as well with a tape measure. [LAUGHTER] He'll be measuring things around the office. It's partly to do with the rent review. Erm the, the instructions I've got is be courteous but we're not here to answer questions. So if he asks you questions about the building or whatever then... dunno
[Sheila:] Ignore him [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] refer him refer him back to Office Services. Erm... right, some other good news as well some good news coming out this morning, all these green shoots everywhere. Just give you some information on, on the fo sales forecast and sales r sales results... erm on the sales forecasting front erm... there's been a, a quite significant growth in head count in March, particularly. Erm... most have, in fact most of which is er b er seventy four additional heads were put on in March, so we've gone from seventeen twenty three to seventeen ninety seven... erm and Mick accounted for most of those with forty four.... Erm... and that means that we're thirty four heads up on budget at the end of March... erm... which is g very good news. Now one of the interesting things about this is that they've worked out, in order to erm achieve our sales forecast, erm the impact of recruitment for each branch is that we need a net growth in branch of one... plus one... for every er on every month. So each month they've gotta put, each branch have gotta put on plus nine between now and December... and that should translate itself... if the theory works... erm to the figures that we want. And it's also not an unachievable figure, plus one a month... net.
[speaker001:] Is that one over their existing forecast? Oh just one over their existing number?
[Mike:] Yeah, take the current number, add one
[speaker001:] Oh
[Mike:] so where you've got ten now, you end up with eleven at the end of the month, next
[speaker001:] Right
[Mike:] month you end up with twelve and so on. Erm now Alton for example started off at the beginning of the year with four and they're now at thirty three... very s very impressive... how much they, them will succeed I don't know but some other good news on that front is that erm the average age of our consultants overall is now thirty one, whereas three years ago it was twe below twenty one. So
[speaker001:] Below twenty one the average?
[Mike:] Yeah, the average age three over three years ago, it's now above thirty one. Thirty one-ish. The average age of our new recruits is now twenty nine. Sorry it's the other figure, the average age of our new recruits was under twenty one three years ago, right? The average age was about twenty three I think....
[speaker001:] So the average of the new recruits is twenty?
[Mike:] Twenty nine.
[speaker001:] Just
[Mike:] Go on.
[speaker001:] What's the total consultant count now?... [LAUGHTER] Seventeen ninety something?
[Sheila:] Seventeen
[Mike:] Yeah it's just yeah it's almost eighteen hundred. Er which is a above budget. The other issue is that erm the production for March erm was a, was a gross brokerage of three point three mill... and erm, which is plus six percent on the budgeted figure
[speaker001:] That's good.
[Mike:] but I ought to explain what I mean by budgeted fi figure. That's the, that's, that's the planned figure, the forecast figure. Now one of the things you might've seen from the corporate briefings is you've got the budget figure and a forecast figure. The budget figure is what's been agreed with... and it's a straightforward month by month, seasonally adjusted erm budget which comes to the end result figure that we're aiming for for this year. Erm... the forecast figure is our plan of getting to the end result, which is not the same thing, which is in a way it's a bit like our overtime hours... and some of the areas we said that we would spend X amount of hours in, in two months, we've had to then change the shape of that and said we'd have half of X over five months, so our forecast i is being done differently, cos they've worked out the, the branch forecast quite significantly differently erm... Jeremy went through, through most of th briefly most of the means of doing that this morning and it sounds a lot more sensible than what they've done in the past. So when you see the forecast figures and, and, in, in the, the, that's what our plan is. If we hit our forecasts, even though it's below budget, we will actually hit our end of year targets. Erm it's g there... now obviously the end of year it builds up over the end of the year partly because it relies on the extra recruitment and the increasing sales per er per capita erm or per capita sales I should say. Erm but it, it certainly is achievable. It isn't sort of oh well, just go for it, you know. It is certainly achievable and it has been done in er at varying levels by region and branch. And the worst branches have been given the, the, the stiffer targets to get them up to scratch. In other words the people who are performing well already will find it harder to make erm a significant inroad into that. So there's some good news there. Erm in March the top branch was erm Hugh... erm interestingly enough erm in the south erm Nicholas erm was well down on recruitment, he was down minus twenty seven on his fore on his target, but was significantly up on his bus business that he brought in because they've been focusing on er in on that. But erm the conversations I've had yesterday indicate that they are doing a major push on recruitment. So er... and they're very bullish I have to say, very bullish about the way things are going. So that's looking pretty good on that.... I don't think I've got anything more from this morning so, only a bit about policy fees which I believe are now scheduled go up in... first of August. There'll be an announcement about that and there's a team being put together to do the implementation.
[speaker001:] Are they gonna actually an announce it to erm the general public?
[Mike:] Yes.
[speaker001:] Cos they were gonna just put it in generally speaking, you know
[Mike:] Yeah but they're, but they're not they're gonna do it in some time in June I think... that's the target. But I haven't got any more details of that yet. They're working on what they're gonna say... and when they're gonna do it at the moment.
[speaker001:] Is that John?... sponsor
[Mike:] Erm I think, well I think 's sponsoring it, erm... with John. And Valerie and erm... Roger will still be helping to put together the communication... stuff.
[speaker001:] Do you know we're actually, on some cases we're actually stealing their thunder. Erm we've got some stand alone term insurances which are currently paying one pound ninety, so the moment they increase the policy fee they'll... attempt to lapse so we're writing to all those people now to tell them to increase. What we telling them to increase to? That I've said erm if you take into account inflation at five percent which they, they, although they're not, haven't put it in concrete, they reckon they're gonna link it to inflation, erm that should be, in thirty years time, about five pounds. So I said erm if we say increase to five pounds now, they don't have to, but it means that they'll probably have a significant unit holding, you know, to compensate them. So five pounds will be absolutely safe but anything less than that won't be. But which, which type of policy is it? It's what? That... I mean there, there won't actually be any impact on the system will there? It won't actually lapse them off but it'll, you know, give them a negative unit situation. Well th if it's only, if it's only term assurance there's no units involved anyway. No but the one pound, the O one record We'd never get our money would we?... the O one record The O one will be going further into than the That's right. Yeah. Is that, presumably that's what's happening at the moment, it just goes one pound ninety in deficit each month Yeah. in the O one? And you see the problem with erm... depending on the unit, the bid off the spread etcetera, sometimes they're paying us one pound ninety and it actually ends up in a nu mi minus unit situation Aha cos of the five percent bid off the spread. So...
[Jackie:] And what happens in those cases then?
[speaker001:] On those cases it, it usually evens itself out... er it usually says oh due to roundings I'll ignore that... erm cos I've actu erm I've gained through the unit statement on, cos I've had one of these stand alone policies, and not wishing to pay the one pound ninety I've actually... knocked it on the head now and incorporated it with another policy, but erm when we looked at it all, overall I've got a nil unit situation but in some months I actually had negative units, some months I had a, a sort of like point zero one of a unit positive. So... there you go.
[Mike:] Okay... erm... I've got, I just thought I'd, might just let you know that the, the end result figure that, that, on the recruitment front, they reckon they'll be at twenty three hundred by the end of the year.... Good news.... Okay, Jackie first of April recall problem....
[Jackie:] control contacted me yesterday to say that erm due to loss of system last week, and the fact that the Easter weekend erm is looming up on us, it means that they've, they've got insufficient time to run all the jobs that they needed to erm in the space that they, they would like to run them in. They gave me two options, basically one was to take the system down for twenty four hours and er [LAUGHTER] while they got, they caught up with the jobs which I, I, I've knocked on the head. The other one was that they would be... th the direct debit re-present on the first of April would be running one day late erm which, as a consequence, means that the recall re-presents would come back one day late. The recall re-presents come back in two phases erm one tape will come back on the fifteenth of April, the second tape will come back on the sixteenth of April... which means that those policies, when status report runs on the fifteenth of April it will only assess those policies erm that have had yeah it'll, it'll assess them up until the fourteenth and fifteenth of April and it won't take into consideration there's been a recall after that date. So it won't, they won't get picked up for arrears processing. I think there's only about, well on average there's only between thirty and forty cases [tut] erm and which they are happy to identify for us erm so we can go in and update the diary or, or do whatever.
[Sheila:] Shouldn't
[Jackie:] Er but I don't believe it's worthwhile doing manual on the cases, they will get picked up in the next data support run which runs two weeks afterwards, that'll be erm beginning of May. So it will just mean that on those cases, on approximately forty, their arrears letter will be going out a couple of weeks late.
[speaker001:] When does the er status report run? Is it on the fifteenth?
[Jackie:] No it, I think it actually runs on the sixteenth but it only looks at... premiums up to the fifteenth, think that's built into the, the, the parameters on it.
[speaker001:] That's okay, if the premium was due on the first... even though, if, if we'd done the... erm the recall before the status report runs... it will show that as being in arrears?
[Jackie:] Yeah but if we'd then gone in to re-present
[speaker001:] Yeah
[Jackie:] it shows it as back in force and the, and the re-present will have gone
[speaker001:] But if that comes back on the sixteenth, is that, is that what you're saying, yeah?
[Jackie:] Yeah. It comes
[speaker001:] And if the status report runs after we run that recall tape No it's because it'll only look at the
[Jackie:] No it can't. It will only look at the premium status up to the fifteenth of the month, it won't take into consideration when so recall's gone through on the sixteenth of the month.
[speaker001:] That's why it used to say please ignore this letter if you've paid in the last few days.
[Jackie:] Mm....
[speaker001:] Mm. I didn't think that was the way it worked.
[Jackie:] Well Terry confirmed that to me yesterday cos I asked the question could we not just run it...
[speaker001:] Later
[Jackie:] later and erm it doesn't
[speaker001:] T Terry?
[Jackie:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Would he know?
[Jackie:] Well he's checked
[speaker001:] It might be worth checking with, with erm Paul. I, I think this business of up to the fourteenth is premiums due up to the fourteenth. If you don't run the status report until the twentieth and you make, you, you do reversals between the fifteenth and the twentieth... the status report will take those into account if they're affecting premiums that were due before the fifteenth.
[Jackie:] Oh, okay I'll check that with
[speaker001:] Jim would know. I don't know if Paul knows. Paul. Or Paul, yeah. Jim did a lot of work in the programming of it.
[Jackie:] Okay, I'll let you know....
[Mike:] Either way it seems like we, even if it is a problem it's Paul anyway, yeah. Okay. data integrity.
[speaker001:] Right. The team our team started erm this week and they're now in the process of writing procedures and er putting the training package together. They're also looking at some of the data integrity erm issues... one of which is potentially quite a major problem and the new system will... for any qualifying plans, once the new system is in, if a policy's in arrears it will try and collect the arrears and it will collect up to a maximum of two premiums each month until the policy's in force and up to date. A lot of erm group one plans are, there are about ten thousand plans that are showing an arrears status at the moment, and premium has been missed some time ago, it's not a, not a current premium, which means on the fifteenth of June or the first of July we will automatically go in and pick up two premiums, we'll t we'll try and collect the arrears without having notified the client of it in any way at all. So we're l, we're l, we're looking at a couple of the options to see, you know, how much will it cost to actually put the money on the policy rather than going to the effort of writing it out, and it's gonna cost about two hundred thousand pounds just to do that, erm... and that, we need, we need to weigh that up with the cost of actually dealing with ten thousand letters to clients, ten thousand enquiries erm... I just wondered what your thoughts were on how we should proceed. [LAUGHTER] the overtime budget [] [LAUGHTER] [] So we, we will have actually written to them won't we? A long time ago, yeah. At some time ago to say you're in arrears Mm. and never written again. Mm.... This is on the conversion is it? Going from? Yes, that first month. Mm. Yeah.... These are the ones where we've pulled, the capsule ones? Same sort of scenario but there's a lot more of them on this is it?... Well the capsule was always worked in the same, in the way No the capsule, yeah, it was always collected Yeah, always collected No er sorry that... you're always sending them duplicate letters aren't you? Are they not gonna get any letters at all? No. No. No no no You're just gonna go in and collect the money. We're just gonna go in and collect the money without having told the client....
[Jackie:] You couldn't credit the money and then take it off later?
[speaker001:] No sense in that.
[Jackie:] it's an ongoing thing.
[speaker001:] Th th those plans are designed such that all the premiums have to be paid.
[Jackie:] Mm.
[Robert:] Can't we trigger another arrears letter?... Just before we go in?... Well if we know what the policies are
[speaker001:] Mm
[Robert:] which we do, we can set a letter up... on the system and we just
[speaker001:] On the system?
[Robert:] Yeah the stand alone letter system, just get everybody to go in and request that letter. It'll be a very, could be a very vague letter... just say you remember we wrote to you some time ago that your plan was in arrears, we've never had this money... and we're now notifying you that we're gonna collect the arrears... on your ne c payment. We won't be able to tell them what that amount is.
[speaker001:] We'll be able to tell them the date though won't we? Mm not necessarily. Not, not on the stand alone system? No. It will be one of two days. It'll be one of two days, it'll be the fifteenth of June or the first of July. It's ten thousand you're talking about? Mm. But they could be in arrears by more than one payment couldn't they? Yeah. So you could not just be talking about the first premium. Well m most Ah most of them will be in, in arrears by one premium if they're two they should be lapped shouldn't they? Yeah. Yeah and we can er, they're actually discounted those ones so yes they are one Good. one in arrears, mm.... I don't think I've got an answer No use looking at me [LAUGHTER] I haven't got any answers for it [] [LAUGHTER] er Well you're answer must be twenty two hundred thousand about a thousand. No it won't won't be. [LAUGHTER] Yeah and that's the other issue, they've gotta be done, whatever we do it's gotta be done quickly now... we're talking about implementation just two months away. Does the erm... does the report show the date that they, they pay their premiums? No. D d yes it does show the date, it doesn't you dates missed. It does show the date, month. First [sigh] I is it possible to identify these cases? Yeah we have identified them. Then isn't it possible for us to take a download of those cases, names an and... addresses, and do a one-off special letter, as Bob suggests? And start doing that now. And just say that in, in, in July, during July, this will be collected in July.... Don't know. You're giving them three months then aren't you? [LAUGHTER] Yes It'll cost us won't it? I mean it's a further development. Yeah if we could download it on to a P C a P C and get the people downstairs to do it it would be about ten grand... all in. Which people? Erm the, not sure, the computer... Information centre you talking about? yeah the information centre. We've got, we've gotta pay, we've gotta pay to draw the, the, the lists off ini initially Well we've gotta do that anyway. We've got that and once you've got that on a disk then to do the download. Yeah, get it downloaded on disk and then put it on a P C downstairs. I don't want spending all the money on
[Robert:] Why can't... we could, as I suggest it would be slightly vague and, and the fact that the, the report shows the collection date, we could say the date it's going to be collected... cos you'd get them to go through all
[speaker001:] Yeah
[Robert:] and do all the fifteenth first
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Robert:] and then we change the letter on the stand alone system and do all the firsts.
[speaker001:] Yes, yeah we could do that. But you just won't say the amount that's all.
[Robert:] Erm... the arrears letter at the moment don't give an amount.... They w o on the arrears letter we write and we say you're in arrears, please send us a cheque for the usual amount.
[speaker001:] Which c which type of policy you talking about? All group one policies, so it's benefits on pensions plus all the erm... qualifying policies on pensions Pensions would have, yeah. would be slightly different because they, we'd only be collecting a part of the premium we wouldn't be collecting their investment part if that's in arrears. I think we have to do a note, a letter, of some sort. Yeah. If there, if there was a So you are in arrears, we've told you before Mm we're gonna, just letting you know we're gonna try and... we're, we'll attempt to collect this Presumably if they wanna know how much they ring up anyway don't they? Yeah. Yeah we don't want ten thousand enquiries Well this is the th No well we can phase it though couldn't we? They're, are they all gonna be the same, same date? Yeah, all gonna be on the fifteenth Well some will be the fifteenth of June, some will be the first of July. No I mean the, the arrears aren't at the same date are they? No. No. How's the report been produced? Just policy number order? Erm Team. team order I believe, yeah. So each team knows their own cases. Does the report tell you how much against each policy? Mm Oh it says how much they're in arrears? Mm.... Do we know wh when it was from? We don't I suppose When the arrears is from no. We've done a comparison between those that were in arrears before the beginning of ninety two and ones that have been in arrears after ninety two, and it's erm... approximately eighty percent before ninety two... erm twenty percent after. Before nineteen ninety two? It's a long time isn't it? Mm yeah. So it's nineteen ninety one arrears? And before. And a lot of them are before that. Can't we just... do a premium holiday on them? Not on You can't have a premium holiday on a qualifying plan. These are all qualifying are they? Mm.... So you're gonna have enquiries, aren't we, about Why how d you know yeah, you're telling me now that I missed something in eighty seven. No we will have already told them then. And that'll be in the diary won't it? Yeah taken you two years to collect it. Mm. Well it could be more than that, it could be eighty Well eighty four, eighty five. Yeah over six years innit?
[Sheila:] Well is there like financial correction? Didn't we do it on ano on another situation where... we're basically saying it's a system problem more than a plan problem.
[Mike:] Are you talking about the, the winding forward of bill two pay two?... Worth a try.
[speaker001:] So we just write it up but we don't actually
[Mike:] Well all we
[Sheila:] Yeah money paid does it?
[speaker001:] I know, yeah.
[Sheila:] It's just a correcting
[speaker001:] Yeah
[Sheila:] system
[speaker001:] But it works it works by money doesn't it?
[Jackie:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] It doesn't work by winding anything on,
[Sheila:] No the, the amount due has to equal the amount paid
[speaker001:] the system can't
[Sheila:] otherwise the system can't cope with it.
[speaker001:] Can't we do a manual?
[Sheila:] Mm. No, the only manual would
[speaker001:] No I mean, that's right, a computer I mean
[Sheila:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Yeah do a things.
[Sheila:] We can't do ten thousand D F Us, no, no way it's
[Robert:] Why what a er... what about doing... taking it out of er I mean the only way is taking out
[Sheila:] Mm.
[Robert:] but putting a note on the... diary that when that policy comes to erm
[speaker001:] Mature No you've still gotta
[Robert:] to mature
[speaker001:] thousand pounds
[Robert:] you pay the money back in to. You take that money
[speaker001:] Yeah it's like a loan isn't it? Yeah that is a debt against the policy but it would be so hard to administer [LAUGHTER]
[Sheila:] Yeah, oh we won't keep that up will we? I mean we'll end up sending out
[speaker001:] Fifteen diary screens later
[Sheila:] you know telling what the value is and
[Robert:] Yeah yeah yeah
[speaker001:] I, I mean if, we know how much is outstanding on each one, we know when it's due to be paid, we know it's gonna be about eight hundred policies a section, is it, ten thousand?
[Sheila:] Ten thousand.
[speaker001:] I think we ought to bite the bullet and write to them now and say if you don't pay us a cheque for this amount cos it's qualifying we'll collect on next date. And we'll just Yeah we're giving them three months notice, if we can do that... quickly And each team'll have to do a hundred
[Sheila:] Well each team, that means we're gonna, we've got overtime [LAUGHTER] then for []
[speaker001:] It's a hundred a week they'll have to do, per team. No wh what I'm saying is why can't we produce the letters off the box... let's, can we find out exactly what it would, what, how er if we can find a way of getting this information downloaded onto a disk and then run it off on a straightforward standard letter basis. Yeah it's gonna be the overtime won't it? Mm.
[Sheila:] How do I find that out then?...
[speaker001:] Erm well the first person to ask probably would be Paul, if he'd download it onto a tape, how difficult would that be... and he'll give you And he'll be going ee! kick him in the goolies, I mean [LAUGHTER]... [LAUGHTER] Scrub that bit [] [LAUGHTER] Erm... Louise did a similar thing for me, managed to get some one-off letters run off the system. Erm Maxine was involved... and they didn't get involved. Louise first.
[Sheila:] Okay.
[Robert:] I... we could still use the stand alone system which I think'll be the quickest.... Use the stand alone system so it gets the date that we're going to collect it, it can say all the things that we've said, it's, you know, we wrote to you some time ago and, and er... we, we didn't get the money... if you don't, as you said, if you don't send us this money we're gonna sounds like a threat doesn't it, if you don't send this money within the next three months we'll automatically collect it together with your regular premium due on the date
[speaker001:] To ensure the qualifying status is maintained
[Robert:] yeah
[speaker001:] Mm
[Robert:] And then we can say the actual amount that we're gonna collect is... and just hand write it....
[speaker001:] Could do.
[Robert:] Leave a space and they just hand write it straight off the report.
[speaker001:] Doesn't look very professional but I suppose it's better than not telling them
[Robert:] Well it's better than spending a lot of money...
[speaker001:] but it's an option.... Get them pre-printed Mm rather than typed.
[Sheila:] You've got all the name and address then
[Robert:] No cos it pulls up the name and address. If you do it through the system
[Sheila:] Yeah
[speaker001:] Oh right yeah
[Robert:] through, through the system, but what that can't do is to pull off the arrears amount. But you, you've got them on the report, we could just write the arrears amount
[speaker001:] Yeah, I think you're right that's, that's
[Mike:] That sounds like a reasonable idea.
[speaker001:] And they are our longer lasting customers so I don't think we're gonna get up their noses too much.
[Sheila:] So I don't need to speak to Paul then? We just need to get a letter set up on the stand alone system.
[Robert:] Well on that way, yeah. Two letters, one for the first one for the fifteenth.
[Sheila:] Mm.
[Mike:] Well let's try and go for that then.
[speaker001:] And you've got the amounts on the report anyway.
[Mike:] check check it out that it will, we think it'll work but
[Robert:] Now whose name shall these go, letters [LAUGHTER] go in []?
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] I, I, I, I should say they need to go off no they need, they need to go off, off, off team
[Sheila:] Mm.
[Mike:] because if anybody's got a query, well like well when was it paid somebody's gonna have to look up and scroll back and
[speaker001:] Yeah mm. In that case we need a space for them to write their team number on. Why not just put it in the reference? But isn't that the sort of thing? No you can't, you, you only have, you can only hand write. If you do that through the cheapest method which is the stand alone system it won't pull that off. No that's what I mean, hand write it Hand write, yeah, and the team telephone number. If you've got any queries
[Sheila:] You don't want enquiry desk number?
[Mike:] No I don't think so, you need to spread the load.
[Robert:] If you've got any queries on this... please call me on and they write in blah blah and they sign their name so that it's legible....
[speaker001:] Isn't the enquiry desk capable of looking out when that arrears
[Mike:] Well th they're al they're already snowed under with calls, if you've got another ten thousand cases... and, and e the teams will have all the information, they'll have the reports you see.
[speaker001:] I don't think the arrears, when they, when it occurred is on the report
[Sheila:] The arrears isn't, no, they'd, you'd have to go in and
[Mike:] No no not when it occurred but what it is... and when it's gonna be collected is....
[Robert:] Well let we'll draft a letter up and see s s s
[Mike:] Okay yeah.
[Robert:] but we need to get that out probably during April.
[Sheila:] Yeah.
[Mike:] Okay.... Anything else on that then? No. Erm on the stuff we've already talked about, sickness, erm er and Michelle, the transfers from S I S, one of the issues from the budget was that erm... B S G... B S G?
[speaker001:] Mm. Yeah
[Mike:] Yeah... is currently running about six vacancies light. Now it may well be that some people will transfer from S I S into B S G, I don't know yet, erm
[speaker001:] Where've they managed to get all these vacancies from? Yeah!...
[Mike:] Cos they're supposed to have, their budget's for twenty and they've only got fourteen. The other issue
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER] They've budgeted for er twelve senior managers [] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Well one or two have left of course. Erm
[Sheila:] Is that a new budget then? Or is that from last year?
[Mike:] No it's from the, it's from the other old budget, I mean it's the... cos it's b all been rejigged but the overall impact is that Ma Mark has got six vacancies. Now the debate we're having is whether or not we fill those... and transfer, not go and recruit extra people but we'd reduce the S I S, cos one of the issues is that... erm... the overspend on Marvin is... seven figures....
[speaker001:] What do you mean on Marvin? On?
[Mike:] Yeah.... Potentially.... [LAUGHTER] Pu pulled Bob out of his coffee yesterday [] [LAUGHTER]... So one of the issues is if we don't do... certainly er the timing, all of the issues that are on there... that we'd like to do erm... that means we've got less testing, if you're gonna do less testing then so it might be that they er re-utilize the resource that way. But I mean that's just what we're exploring at the moment. So it might well be that we don't get the S I S people that we previously thought we might do. In some ways that might be good news, some ways it isn't.... Erm but again I don't suspect that there's gonna be any... any impact on that for the, for at least two months.
[speaker001:] There wouldn't be too many of the S I S people that... would be suitable would there?...
[Mike:] Well no, but then that hasn't stopped has it? If you see what I mean. So in some
[speaker001:] Right.
[Mike:] ways I'm not unhappy.
[speaker001:] No no, oh no.
[Mike:] erm if that does come about but it's, it's an issue. It's like the same issue we talked about the three year plan projects... if necessary we'll have to slow down on some of the projects, certainly to get through this budget year intact. Obviously if business goes really swimmingly then it may be easier to, I'm not sure.... Phil, units update,
[Phil:] Right erm... we have run two now er unit data correction runs and... it looks like we're correcting about seventy six percent, on average, of the policy base... erm the other twenty four percent being cases which are being sliced erm multiple events, you know, er and all the rest of it, all real horror stories. Erm it does mean that we've got, so far we've gone through twenty two thousand policies, we're still in December erm anniversary dates erm so there's twenty thousand waiting to be printed... two thousand were printed last night and they're going straight out the door, today. Erm we did an initial pilot run of nine hundred and seven, er and we had them redirected here which was quite fortunate cos we did find some er previously unthought of errors, erm... there were two categories, these are ones where, since the renewal date, they've had er a decrease erm sorry an increase which meant that erm we're now quoting on their benefit statement as at last renewal, they've got today's er premium which of course is wrong, so we've had those redirected... in future, inside here. And there's also some cases where er the plans have actually partially lapsed since last renewal and in which case it's quoting the premium they're paying now which is a lot less than the premium they were paying at renewal.
[Jackie:] So who's gonna be doing those?
[Phil:] Those are gonna be redirected in here erm as well but it turns out that erm... those two types roughly equate to forty out of two thousand which is... half a, half a percent?
[Mike:] Yeah. It's
[Phil:] So
[Mike:] only for... matter of a week, ten days... by which time it'll be fixed.
[Phil:] Yeah we
[Jackie:] So there's we just won't be sending statements out?
[Phil:] Er no th th... for anything that they run this week, they'll be redirected in in-house, so we should be getting er about forty of those statements in tomorrow and forty the next day.
[Jackie:] And then they'll be reproduced?
[Phil:] And then what we'll have to do,th the unit statement's perfectly okay, the benefit statement all you've got to do is get the benefit statement retyped but with a different premium in at renewal date.
[Jackie:] So the teams have got to do that have they?
[Phil:] Yeah.
[Mike:] This problem is only because you're doing them retrospectively, if you were up to date you wouldn't have a problem at all would you?
[Phil:] Yes no problem, no. I mean it'll, this
[Mike:] But we can't wait until... Ju July for, to be complete.
[speaker001:] So you'd rather go ahead and just make numbers involved. Yeah.
[Phil:] Well cos, for the sake of ten days there er er er erm Martin was gonna fix the problem, erm... within ten days but we don't wanna have to go back and reprint everything cos the unit statement's perfectly valid.
[speaker001:] Yeah.
[Phil:] Most of the i issues on the ben for most benefit statements they're also valid, it's just for these small number of cases where they're, they're not. Erm and it's really a question of retype the, the benefit
[Jackie:] Is it set up on the system, word processing?
[Phil:] No it's not yet. I've got the first batch came back this morning, so now I, I've actually got the examples I can do it, it's not, no problem. Erm we've got, because we decided er decided that er redirect the whole first batch in-house we've got nine hundred and odd statements
[Mike:] You could of course not send the benefit statement.
[speaker001:] Well the letter says
[Jackie:] Mm.
[speaker001:] change the letter.
[Jackie:] So if you're gonna retype you might as well
[Phil:] Yeah and it's nice on the benefit statement to at least they've got something to reconcile against the units so that you've paid a total of ten
[Mike:] Yeah, yeah you're right, yeah I was
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] How ma how many do you reckon there'll be?
[Phil:] [LAUGHTER] Yeah yeah I know, yeah [].
[speaker001:] How many do you reckon there'll be?
[Jackie:] Forty a day.
[Phil:] Forty a day. So it's not an awful hassle
[speaker001:] Forty over ten days?
[Phil:] No forty over er er
[speaker001:] Er forty a day over ten days.
[Phil:] it'll only be until I should think erm... next Tuesday will be the last batch, cos we've got these bank holidays fortunately in the, in the way where I T still work but we don't and so they're gonna fix, they'll carry on fixing it over the weekend. Erm there's nine hundred statements coming back in today but the units team that you all kindly lent me, we're all gonna sort through those and stuff them in envelopes and get them out the door.
[speaker001:] Okay.
[Jackie:] So the other ones, the ones that need correcting, we've gotta do a procedure or something for the team?
[Mike:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] How do you pick up the ones that need correcting?
[Phil:] The, they did an easy-trieve which runs every, every time they do a run they, they run and... before they do a run they do an easy-trieve er identify those cases and then there's a marker you can put on poll M to redirect, it doesn't change the address but it redirects the unit statement in-house.
[speaker001:] Ooh magic.
[Phil:] Yeah.
[speaker001:] Super.
[Phil:] I had to use it for one of Andy
[speaker001:] That's worth knowing isn't it, in case
[Phil:] yeah one of Andy's cases this morning I had to do it where it had growth old cash on it, which it shouldn't have had so it was quite handy.
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Phil:] And there you have it. So we're up and running now.
[Mike:] Okay statement. Okay I suggest we take a five minute... break before we go on and just talk about regionalization and get a coffee or whatever. Back here at five to?
[speaker001:] Mm... [break in recording]
[Mike:] on the faxes, just erm one item that came up really from yesterday which I've already passed on to, to Sheila from the south cos it was raised at the south meeting but I think it's relevant to everybody. When we're using the fax facility and we get a series of policy numbers and a problem coming through to us erm... that's not so bad cos that's being amalgamated by the branch secretaries, when it's going back, and we do it on the same one single fax going back, they're sitting there snipping up individual replies, you know putting individual... replies into consultants' baskets... unless they photocopy the whole sheet in which case they've got a confidentiality problem. Do you think you could look into trying to, when we're going back on the information, sending an individual fax for each case?...
[speaker001:] We had this with Malcolm didn't we? From before.
[Sheila:] I. Yeah and we talked about doing it by consultant, rather than by client
[Mike:] Well by consultant, yeah.
[Sheila:] it was an idea. But some of the branches apparently just like pinned it up, been quite happy to pin up the returned fax and then each consultant just gone and read his own bit.
[Mike:] Yeah I know but, but mm okay
[Sheila:] I mean rather than do all the photocopying or whatever.
[Mike:] If you ha if you haven't had it rai if you haven't got a problem then fair enough but if you do get it raised as a problem, the confidentiality bit, then fair enough. But I told Malcolm yesterday that I thought that, that we operated on the basis that they trusted everybody....
[speaker001:] There's a cost implication there of doing a separate fax for each consultant.
[Sheila:] Yeah. And time.
[Jackie:] Cos on ours, we just return the same thing that they send
[speaker001:] That's right. What we get
[Jackie:] Yeah, yeah that's right.
[Mike:] Well perhaps I'll just do it for Malcolm's patch. I'll speak to Tim, what did Tim think?
[speaker001:] I think it was they wanted a complete reply for each consultant file, or case file didn't they?
[Sheila:] Mm.
[speaker001:] Which Unlike Malcolm to complain though isn't it?
[Sheila:] Mm.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] Validly? No you're right. With a valid er...
[Mike:] Right, okay. Erm the other thing was that the people at senior level need to be reminded, if they do have a major problem erm that's David and Malcolm, erm where, if they've got a rather difficult case and it's urgent and they want a, they don't wanna have to put it on a, on a fax, they want, they need it there and then... erm, and they don't like the telephone call facility, I said well, well that's primarily for consultants.... Erm
[speaker009:] Sorry to interrupt you but there's nobody around at all and I've, yeah if I can just
[Mike:] No and Sue's just gone off sick, yeah.
[speaker009:] leave that with Phil rather than keep running up and down
[Mike:] Yeah sure.
[speaker009:] the stairs.
[Phil:] Ta, ta.
[speaker009:] Erm Ian left that with me and I was to speak to Bob before Bob gave it to because it wasn't very good.
[Phil:] Oh right.
[speaker009:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] [LAUGHTER] Wha what wasn't very good about it []?
[speaker009:] when you've checked it. [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] Oh the value isn't very good?
[speaker009:] Well that's what I assume he meant.
[Mike:] Yeah we know that, I've already told Bob that.
[Phil:] Ah! [LAUGHTER] It's even worse [].
[Mike:] [LAUGHTER]
[speaker001:] Oh no!
[Phil:] He's made seven and a half...
[speaker001:] P?
[speaker009:] Thank you very much.
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
[Mike:] Yep. Okay so where were we? Talking about the faxes weren't we? Erm... the point I made to them, that everybody round that table, if they did have a problem that they thought was urgent, they should get on the phone to the, you know, Steve and
[Steve:] Mm
[Sheila:] They do.
[Mike:] Sheila.
[Sheila:] I mean they do do it.
[Steve:] Yeah
[Mike:] I know they do but I mean I
[Sheila:] [LAUGHTER]
[Mike:] I'm not gonna sit there calling Malcolm a... I could have done but er
[Steve:] What I don't like is that we went back didn't we, I don't know if you saw my thing to David where... we report back on a fax, report every month
[Mike:] Yeah.
[Steve:] who is phoning. Nicholas wanted to know who uses the phone
[Sheila:] That's right.
[Steve:] so we report back. David didn't like it because he was on there and so we went through saying that I have only the most important
[Mike:] It's not an issue for everybody else round the table
[Steve:] That's right.
[Mike:] except for those two.
[Steve:] Yeah.
[Mike:] But it's just worth bearing in mind that erm, as long as the senior people are quite comfortable they can get through to, to us if they need to, that they're not bound by the normal... fax routine or whatever. But they should know that anyway, or I made that point yesterday, so er th the point they quoted was that erm erm rang up the team and got told no you've gotta put it on a fax, [whispering] []... find it hard to believe that that was if that was the manager on the phone but it's just important that the people on the team know who the senior managers are.
[Sheila:] Mm.
[Mike:] That's all. So it's worth reiterating, making sure each member of the team knows who the senior people are and the branches they're s they're operating. And if necessary get the things typed up and pinned up, key... senior personnel at the branches. Put a branch organizations chart up.... Okay... er [cough]... Phil I'll need to see you about erm organizing the unit party.
[Phil:] We haven't done unit regionalization by the way, you... skipped that.... You haven't done
[Mike:] Oh I know that, I know but I'm
[Phil:] Oh right.
[Mike:] waiting until after Kevin 's been in and gone... erm cos, cos it'll, I don't wanna stop half way through.
[Phil:] Oh right.
[Mike:] Erm
[speaker001:] What's he coming in for? That's what I thought, it's not on the...
[Mike:] Talking about introducers, right. That's the participants that I've got, do you wanna have a check of it, see if there's anybody that's been missed off.
[Phil:] I thought th yeah I thought this was a fair old crowd anyway.
[Mike:] Yeah well... hopefully there won't be anybody that missed off but
[Robert:] Have... I've got a com er s sort of complaint
[Mike:] Take it away
[Robert:] I er
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] I thought it was the way you were sitting Bob [] [LAUGHTER] [LAUGHTER]
[Robert:] from erm Andy... there's a... party and a... units party... but he doesn't know anything about a units party.
[Mike:] the wrong team hasn't he? [LAUGHTER]
[Robert:] So I said, so I said it's not fully delivered yet. But are we gonna do something?
[Mike:] No listen we don't, I need to speak to Chris about it but erm... is Andy on that list?...
[speaker001:] Andy wouldn't be from There's a couple of 's people on there. There's a lot of people here who have left as well but er Well once they've got the valuations in and switches... and it's not till June
[Mike:] No well we might well it might be that we say we want a combined party, I don't know,
[speaker001:] what the hell does he have to do with it?
[Mike:] write the veto
[speaker001:] [LAUGHTER] Oh right. We'll blackball him for a start []
[Mike:] playing so, it'll be a bit like, it'll be like the party sort of... Erm, talking about erm parties and things, erm... we ought to have a social event for client services I think, certainly sooner rather than later, particularly with regionalization looming. Just wondered if we could get something organized, don't know what to do.... But I thought that erm... barn dance or something like that would be... favourite cos it's not too expensive and it's something that everybody can muck in on.... Any other good ideas?
[speaker001:] Get it done quite cheaply in, in Harlow.... Presumably we, are we charging staff for this? Are we charging staff for it?
[Jackie:] We won't have to pay for it will we?
[speaker001:] Or are we getting it out of our own budget?
[Mike:] No I think we'll have to... charge something. Well I
[speaker001:] Well in that case
[Mike:] I can probably get something towards it but but not
[speaker001:] Well in that case I think the cheapest cheapest alternative yeah is erm, if you're gonna do er something like that, would be a barn dance in the hall down Edinburgh Way er which you get quite cheap
[Mike:] Oh
[speaker001:] it's about hundred and fifty quid.... no the football team organized a disco there. I... I know a barn dance caller... who's recently offered his services.
[Mike:] Oh right, is that from Surrey?...
[speaker001:] Yeah but I don't know what... what he'd charge for coming up.
[Mike:] Yeah, okay. Can we
[speaker001:] But I could ring
[Mike:] can we explore that?
[speaker001:] Mm.
[Mike:] And see if we get something set up, probably I think May would be favourite wouldn't it?... It's not too far away and it's not too close to the, the changes... and some of the announcements will be out by then. Kevin's just arrived so I'll go and get Kevin in, erm... copy of what was broadly speaking agreed... of which Phil's already got a copy anyway.
[Phil:] So's everybody else I think.
[Mike:] Yeah oh have you? Oh right, oh sorry about that.
[speaker001:] Has it changed at all?
[Mike:] Sorry?
[Jackie:] No.
[speaker001:] Hasn't changed at all? No. Yeah Wednesday the twenty first we're it's Tuesday evening Yeah.
[Mike:] Right now well all I, I ex I knew that you were having meetings about it so really all, all I need you to do is actually get this validated by your group and if there were any change significant changes you wanted to make then... to come back to me and David with that... those suggestions but erm it struck me that th the thing hangs together quite well. Erm so, in principle we've agreed that schedule, er I'm waiting for erm Bob to sort V I out and the name erm... as you may be aware erm Bob wants to call it client servicing and our view was that by and large it wasn't a question of having to have loads more different screens we just needed them in different areas and they could, they'd go to Louise to get where people were going to be and it's mostly about the R S six thousand for commission... erm on which there are only about twenty of those anyway, twenty seven... so I didn't really see that as being a major issue. The only thing I said was about T S G and David said that