Santee Cooper: How We Keep The Power On
Staff Report From South Carolina CEO
Friday, March 27th, 2020
Self-isolating. Social distancing. Quarantine. Doing what we need to do to stop the spread of COVID-19. How do we stay so far apart and keep generating power and getting it to your homes and businesses? It’s a new way of thinking.
Thanks to technology, and power, many of us are working from home. We’re communicating via WebEx, email, and instant messaging like so many of you. Even our Customer Care Center’s customer service representatives are able to take your calls from their homes and chat with you online. Our retail offices are now drive-thru only. All of our technical service people are working from home and doing it so most of the rest of us can all work from home.
We’ve brought in about 20 additional nurses to our staff to help monitor employees and answer any questions they may have. With schools being closed, we were able to hire a lot of nurses from the school systems. We’re asking our employees who have to come to work to take their temperatures and if they have one, not to come in.
That includes our generating stations. They’re staggering shifts. Non-essential staff just aren’t allowed in.
To try to keep as many people as healthy as possible, we’re separating our employees who do have to physically come in to one of our facilities. Transmission crews are using smaller crews and crews are not allowed to mix. Distribution field crews are working staggered shifts. They are spending minimal time in service headquarters. Field crews who can go directly to jobs are doing so. We also have additional contract cleaners cleaning multiple times a day.
To keep supplies coming in, our buyers and Investment Recovery agents are working from home. We still have to staff our warehouses, so they are splitting shifts to keep their distance from each other. Accounting is also staggering staff.
We’re cleaning workstations as much as possible. And hunkering down right here with you.
And while you’re at home, you can use MEL to do business with us online.
We also invite you and your children to join us on Facebook Live on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 11 a.m. for interesting science programs you can do with your children with items you have around the house.
Stay vigilant and stay safe and let us know if you need us. We’re here for you.