Unit 210 – Handle Mail
Section 1: Understand security procedures when handling mail or packages.
1.1 Explain the purpose of security procedures for handling mail and packages.
The purpose of having security procedures in place for when you’re handling mail or packages is to make sure that nothing confidential to the business is received by the wrong person. Mail to a business could contain information about customers, staff or upcoming events for the business which would need to kept secure until they reached the recipient the security procedures would make sure that the mail was not lost while it is being sent it would also make sure that the mail wasn’t picked up by the wrong person before the recipient.
1.2 Give examples of security procedures for handling mail in organisations.
One of the procedures would be to never open a package that seems suspicious or wasn’t expected by anybody in the business. If a questionable parcel is delivers it should not be passed on to the member of staff it was addressed to or any other member of staff, the parcel should be kept in a safe place and if you feel it needed call the emergency services to come and check the parcel and potentially dispose of it. It is also important to make sure that you can remember who delivered the parcel if not take a note of them if possible. You could also check to see if they work for any regular courier company that delivers to the business or if they work for the local mail office.
Section 2: Understand the range of available internal and external mail services.
2.1 Explain the purpose of distributing and dispatching mail to the correct recipient within agreed timescales.
The purpose of distributing and dispatching mail to the correct people in the correct time scale is to make sure that they get the documents or item when they need it. An example of this would be sending an item out to a customer, the staff would need to make sure that the correct address was on the parcel so that the customer got the correct item and they would also need to dispatch the item as quickly as possible so that the customer wouldn’t complain about slow dispatch or try and find another company that sell the same items but send mail out quicker. Another example would be a member of staff needing a parcel urgently and not receiving it on time as it hasn’t been distributed to them in time which would mean they would have to go and look for the parcel which they would find time consuming and could put them behind schedule for the job they needed to do.
2.2 State the organisational structure and names, roles and locations of individuals and teams.

2.3 Give examples of internal and external mail services.
There are many different types of internal and external services. Some examples of these are email which can be both internal where staff members send emails to each other or external where an email is sent to somebody outside of the business. Business can also send and receive mail by using the royal mail or couriers. Another method is to write a memo by hand and deliver it to another staff member of staff in a different department which would be an example of internal mail.
2.4 Give reasons for selecting internal and external mail services.
Internal and external mail services are both relatively easy ways to send mail. Internal mail services allow you to send information to different members of staff without you having to pay any postage charges. External mail services allows you to communicate with people outside of the company such as suppliers or customers, it is also a method of delivering orders to customers who have bought from the company.
2.5 Describe the methods of calculating postage charges for mail or packages.
You could use a franking machine to determine the cost to send a letter from the business or for larger purposes you can look at the royal mail’s price guide which would tell you all the prices for different types of mail. It allows you to enter the weight of the parcel and whether you want to send it 2nd class, 1st class or recorded then it would give you the price of the parcel that you would want to send.
2.6 Describe the types of problems that may occur with incoming and outgoing mail and how to deal with these.
Some problems that may occur is the parcel being lost or damaged during the process of being delivered which could lead to a customer not getting there parcel which could then leas to the company having to deal with complaints. Another problem is a member of staff missing a delivery that they urgently needed this would mean that they would have to wait until it was back in the main post office then go and collect it which would delay the work they have to do.