Members have raised questions with the Branch on specific points. We have raised these with PCS DWP Group and have received answers, the details are published below:

Question 1:

Regarding the Employee Deal cover, is there a minimum size a Team can be? 50 is recommended but we are a team of far less than that (under 10) are we expected to cover 08:00 – 18:00 Monday to Friday.

If the level of staffing/ cover is reasonable now, and if a member goes part time how will this affect this arrangement?

 Answer

 The word team is not ideal as it does not mean a single  team with a team leader in this situation.  It should be made up of group of staff of at least 50 doing the same kind of role who can cover each other – eg in ops a HEO command. Ideally this should be in the same site but in a lot of cases the team will be made up of staff across a number of sites.  There needs to be a reasonable number in an ED team to make working out cover fair to work out and evens out the impact of different working patterns where members have less flexibility.  That can include current part time working patterns or future ones.  The team leaders should be in one team as they can help cover each other across the opening hours.

Teams are being discussed in ops but the planning is further behind in corporate centre.  We are going to discuss implantation of ED with the ED lead in each of the Corporate Centre groups.