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Government Leader home > news stories
12/14/05
Pride, performance drive Postal Service manager
By
Stephen Barr
Special to Government Leader
At the Postal Service, officials predict the busiest mailing day of the year will fall on Dec. 19, when 900 million letters, packages and other pieces of mail flow through the postal system, up from 670 million pieces on an average day.
Earlier this month, postal officials reported that they would end fiscal 2005 with a net income of $1.4 billion on record revenues of $70 billion and record volume of 212 billion pieces of mail.
Now that’s a big business.
It’s also a business that increasingly demands efficiency, and that means delivery of “every piece, every day,” Alan Catlin, the postmaster for Littleton, Colo., a Denver suburb, said.
One of Catlin’s post offices recently received the Postal Service’s national award for outstanding service, efficiency and productivity. The Littleton Highlands Ranch Post Office averaged 97 percent in on-time delivery of local first-class mail this past year. That was 2 percentage points better than the national average.
Highlands Ranch is one of the fastest-growing communities in the nation, and not far from Rocky Mountain ski and recreation resorts. The post office, with 208 full- and part-time employees, delivers more than 280,000 pieces of mail each day to about 35,000 households.
“Every piece, every day” is the motto for the post office and the rest of the Colorado-Wyoming Postal District, Catlin said. “Sometimes that can be a challenge,” he added, noting that the region faces freezing temperatures, heavy snowfalls and fierce winter winds in the holiday period that produces the Postal Service’s biggest mailing days.
Catlin, a 24-year postal employee who previously served as postmaster for Boulder, Colo., said he tries to keep in mind three primary goals as he oversees five postal stations in the Littleton area.
“For myself,” he said, “I try to come to work every day with a sense of purpose. I’m here for a reason and I’m going to accomplish that as best I can.”
Secondly, Catlin said, he tries to promote a positive attitude in the workplace. “It’s important that everyone comes to work with that attitude … and we try to instill in them that they have to take responsibility, regardless of their piece of the puzzle.”
His last goal is to reward employees and “value those who do their job and do it well.”
The mail typically comes in from Denver about 11:30 p.m., and about 90 percent of the letters carry a bar code, which speeds their sorting for delivery. Letter carriers make their rounds during the day.
The Postal Service contracts with IBM Corp.’s national business consulting practice for quarterly audits of on-time mail service, part of USPS’ National Performance Assessment system. The Colorado-Wyoming Postal District has been ranked No. 1 in the IBM survey for two consecutive years.
The Internet and e-mail, however, are cutting into the Postal Service’s first-class mail volume, and agency critics warn that the post office could fall into a downward spiral and become a financially troubled agency.
Computers are taking away a portion of the mail, Catlin acknowledged. But, he said, “We still deliver that personal touch in a handwritten form. A card or letter from a grandchild to his or her grandmother still has that personal touch that I don’t think a computer necessarily has,” Catlin added.
“And we take pride that they are delivered every day.”
Stephen Barr writes the Federal Diary column for the Washington Post. He also hosts an online discussion, “Federal Diary Live,” each Wednesday at washingtonpost.com.
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