Background
Front-line supervisors are the first layer of management directly above craft employees and are the leaders who oversee day-to-day operations. Their interactions with employees and customers can influence productivity and morale. Additionally, they significantly contribute to the accomplishment of Postal Service goals, including ensuring customers receive quality service and their mail and parcels on time. When supervisor vacancies are not filled timely, there are risks of an increase in staff shortages — negatively affecting operations — and additional workload may strain existing supervisors.
What We Did
Our objective was to evaluate whether corrective actions taken by the Postal Service in response to prior recommendations in the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) First Line Supervisor Recruitment and Retention audit report (Report Number 19SMG008HR000-R20) sufficiently addressed the issues identified and to further assess initiatives related to supervisor vacancies. For this audit, we statistically sampled 207 internal and 64 external supervisor vacancies between Fiscal Years 2021 and 2023 to determine whether the Postal Service filled supervisor vacancies timely and whether hiring documentation was completed and retained. We focused on customer services, processing and distribution, maintenance, and logistics operations supervisors located in Postal Service retail and delivery and mail processing facilities.
What We Found
The Postal Service has generally improved its procedures and practices to decrease the number of supervisor vacancies by streamlining the supervisor hiring process and engaging potential applicants during job fairs and conferences. However, hiring challenges still exist in certain areas due to internal factors such as retirements, a lack of qualified applicants for supervisor positions, and supervisors being detailed to other positions. External factors also present hiring challenges due to specific hardships in certain geographic locations. Additionally, although the Postal Service completed and maintained supporting documentation when filling supervisor vacancies, opportunities exist to improve the timeliness of completing supervisor hiring activities. Further, the Vacancy Management dashboard did not always provide accurate data for hiring managers when monitoring the timeliness of hiring activities.
Recommendations and Management’s Comments
We made three recommendations to address the issues identified in the report. Postal Service management agreed with all recommendations. Management’s comments and our evaluation are at the end of each finding and recommendation. The OIG considers management’s comments responsive to all recommendations, as corrective actions should resolve the issues identified in the report.
