The holiday season is fast approaching, meaning that the peak season will soon be here with us. Consequently, we can’t overlook but give mail all the attention it deserves. After all, at this time of the year, from Thanksgiving through Christmas, experiencing package overflow isn’t uncommon.
Frankly, many employees will be receiving more packages, particularly holiday gifts from friends, family, and even colleagues, making your mailroom busier than any other time of the year.
During the 2018 holiday season, the United States Postal Service (USPS) estimated delivering up to 915 million packages. And that begs the question; are you ready to help your workers seamlessly receive increased packages and send parcels during this holiday season? Well, let’s dig in and find the best way to manage employees’ packages at the workplace.
Tips for Preparing Your Package Room for the Holiday Package Overflow
Foremost, did you know that the United States Postal Service oversees roughly 500 million pieces of mail daily, while renowned shippers like UPS and FedEx deliver up to 34 million packages collectively? With these numbers, the USPS has even raised concerns about package safety.
Unfortunately, unlike business shipments, most personal packages aren’t often added to the loading dock but instead put straight into the front desk. Of course, this wouldn’t paint a professional image for your office visitors. So, here are tips to put into practice to best organize your mailroom system by ensuring these packages get to the right employees without spending too much resources, time, or effort:
1. Set Clear Expectations
One thing’s sure; if you don’t know what to expect or what you should do, you can hardly prepare well. Help your employees know and understand what is expected from them or how they are expected to respond. You can simply send out communications about how employees can pick up their packages. These should be clearly defined instructions communicated in a way that everyone can understand.
For instance, what times should they pick up their packages? And yes, that needs to be conducted at different times of the day. This is to avoid congestion at the package room and also to allow for flexibility amid holiday commitments. The location should also be clearly stated, and any emerging changes communicated early enough.
2. Set Up Mail Stops
Knowing where and how to pick up the packages is one thing. But for your employees to receive the mails quickly, you need to set up mail stops to designate specific areas where employees can pick up packages from different parts of the building. This is especially essential for larger facilities to designate the delivery easily and pick locations/rooms.
These mail stops will help streamline the entire handling process, making it easier for the mail service personnel to systematically sort the mail and ensure faster delivery. Plus, this will go a long way to enhance your efficiency and overall business success.
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3. Identify an Overflow Room
In most cases, package management may not be much of a high priority in business facilities compared to other settings. But then, in reality, almost everyone in the company needs or uses mailroom services. And for this reason, package overflow becomes nearly inevitable at some point in time.
As a result, it is advisable to set up a package overflow room whose main purpose will be handling packages when the mailroom is filled to capacity. And with the holiday season around the corner, it would be best if you considered adding an overflow room in your building. You might also need designated areas if package sizes are large or require special handling.
4. Try Self-Service Package Pick Up
Do you often have high mail volumes? One of the best ways to help simplify the process is by considering a self-service package pick-up system. Technologies such as smart lockers come in handy to help lighten the task. Self-service package lockers allow your employees to individually run the pick-up process, requiring minimal to no staff assistance. Ideally, this can be a one-of-a-kind means of managing your package room as it may also allow employees 24/7 access to collecting their packages.
5. Take Photos of Packages
You may be wondering why? The simple answer is that you need to track packages from the drop-off point to the pick-up point. This is mainly to help monitor their condition from the time of their arrival until they’re picked and also to identify them on pick up by their recipients. So, in other words, you need to take photos when packages come in and when they leave to improve your mailroom efficiency and, most importantly, for accountability purposes.
6. Set Up Automated Text Reminders
Following the outbreak of the pandemic, many businesses resorted to remote working and hybrid work models. Some businesses reverted to their old ways of doing things. However, a good number are still using hybrid workforces even in this post-COVID-19 period. This means that employees are working both remotely and in-office.
Consequently, you need to set up automated text reminders to remind hybrid workers to pick up their packages even when they are not in the office. Even so, not all employees will be able to pick up their packages on time. So recipients that will not pick up their packages due to various reasons will also get automated reminders.
Organize Your Package Room Today
Package rooms can sometimes be an overlooked gem at the workplace, thus causing package overflow. However, these tips can help you better handle package management with less effort and resources. And the better news is that there’s even a better way to manage packages at your workplace.
Notifii Track, a package management software, is a great solution to help keep your package room organized and increase your office efficiency on the eve of the holiday season. To create an easy to use and organized mailroom, put into practice these tips in managing package overflow and integrate Notifii Track, the inbound package logging software.
You can schedule a free demo with us and see how easy you can make package management a seamless process at your workplace.
Read More:
Why Package Management Software is Essential for an Apartment Building Mailroom
Client Packages: Dealing with the Aftermath of Accepting Packages