Significant progress has been made on our Awards recovery plan during October and we are really encouraged with the results. All the activities we have put in place over the last few months are really starting to have a positive impact. As we have a much clearer view and we are tracking very closely each stage of the awards process, we can clearly see how the profile has changed and it is showing dramatic steps forward,
We have processed over 7,500 Awards in October. This is a massive achievement. We are clearing bottlenecks, which is not just assisting in reducing the volume of older awards but also enabling us to complete new awards to ensure no more are going late. Of those 7,500 Awards paid, over 2000 of them are guaranteed to have the lump sum (if appropriate) paid into their bank account the day after they retire.
You will see from these charts that this shows during October overall, there has been an increase in throughput at all stages of the awards process following the changes we have made to maximise production.
The graph below shows the profile of awards paid in each month since June and the timeliness of when they were paid in relation to someone’s retirement date.
It shows very clearly the volume of awards paid early this month in comparison to previous months and similarly those paid late to previous months as we have also cleared the older ones.
The total number of award applications on hand is 8186* which has reduced from 11,500 at its peak. We still have 1117* awards that remain late but we anticipate that these should all be cleared by the end of November based on current clearance rates.
For a couple of weeks this month, we saw an improvement in our contact centre as all KPI’s were being achieved consistently every day. However, during the latter part of the month we have once again seen an increase in wait times.
We have reviewed some calls to understand why it remains high and couldn’t find a specific pattern as such; calls were for varied reasons rather than all on a particular subject that we can specifically address with more proactive communications. We continue to work closely with our Contact Centre colleagues to monitor this.
We will continue to work through the activities mentioned in all our previous briefings until we achieve full recovery and we will update you further in mid November.