3. Employees and the Workplace
In 2001, the Postal Service continued its vigorous commitment to an inclusive and welcoming workplace. Consistent with its values of fairness, opportunity, safety and security, the Postal Service pursued goals aimed at ensuring that all employees are given the knowledge and training to be successful and that all are recognized for and take pride in contributing to the success of customers and the Postal Service.

This year, the Office of Equal Employment Opportunity and the REDRESS® (Resolve Employment Disputes, Reach Equitable Solutions) program enjoyed its first full year as an integrated organization. A renewed effort by EEP professionals at the district level has focused attention on dispute resolution at the early stage of the conflict. For the third consecutive year, the number of EEO pre-complaint counselings in the Postal Service decreased, attributable in large measure to the REDRESS program. The target participation rate of 70% was exceeded as a 76.2% rate of participation was achieved. The Postal Service will continue to emphasize the REDRESS process as a means of bringing employees and managers face to face to learn to deal with conflict and misunderstanding in the workplace.

The subgoals set for the goal of ensuring an inclusive and fair workplace environment with opportunities for all employees were achieved. Managers were made accountable for the inclusive and fair workplace goal in their own merit evaluation process. And, the vice president for Diversity conducted targeted quarterly reviews of Affirmative Employment Plans to ensure that all groups were represented in details and assignments, succession plans and other activities supporting the affirmative employment plan.

Employee training programs, stipulated as goals, were offered in Workplace Environment Interpersonal Skills. The program target for interpersonal skills training of 97% of EAS employees was exceeded as 100% participation was achieved; the target of 100% craft work unit participation was not achieved, as 98.55% received training.

Progress was made in improving postal employees’ safety, security and well-being. In 2001, the Postal Service implemented the OSHA Illness Injury Indicator as the universal workplace safety measure, pursuant to the requirements of the Postal Employees’ Safety Enhancement Act of 1998. In this first ‘learning’ year of reporting this performance goal as a compensable target, the Postal Service did not achieve its target of 7.96 for this indicator. The performance result of 8.46 reflected our process of adjusting our previous system to conform to OSHA’s complex reporting system.

In 2001, the Postal Service met the Employee Survey Index subgoal of improving the 2000 VOE Survey Index score of 57.5. In 2001, the Postal Service achieved a score of 58.1, a 0.6 improvement over 2000’s baseline index.