Saba powers enterprisewide learning solution to help utility Santee Cooper meet regulatory and corporate requirements.

CASE STUDY

Industry: Energy, UtilitiesUse Case: Learning Management

CHALLENGE

Provide a comprehensive, easily managed training and development program that meets demanding Federal and state regulatory requirements and enhances the performance of a wide range of employees — from office staff to plant operations personnel.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

• Create a culture where employees seek out learning opportunities to work safer and more productively, rather than simply to meet regulatory requirements

• Enable managers to maintain their business-unit’s compliance, with multi-faceted reporting options to demonstrate 100 percent compliance with federal and state regulations

• Automatically notify employees when required certifications are expiring to allow ample time to re-certify

• Reduce overtime and travel expenses paid to employees for training outside work hours

• Achieve the largest one-year reduction in accidents in the utility’s history — and maintain the highest levels of safety, resulting in record incentive awards shared by all employees

Santee Cooper is South Carolina’s state-owned electric and water utility and the state’s largest power producer. The source of power for more than two million South Carolinians, the utility is the nation’s second largest publicly owned electric utility among state, municipal and district systems — and the country’s third-largest producer based on megawatt-hour sales to end-users. Santee Cooper also initiated South Carolina’s first “green power” program in 2001 and now generates 28 megawatts of electricity annually from five landfill-based generating stations.

Adoption has been universal and today every employee — from our new hires to the CEO — completes training within Saba Learning. The Saba solution aligns all the data and allows for greater engagement with the essential training for each role.

Greg Lindamood, Senior Training Instructor, Santee Cooper

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As a state utility, Santee Cooper must meet the needs of all residents while complying with applicable federal and state regulatory standards. Contributing to the challenge is the fact that the utility has approximately 1,850 employees spread across South Carolina’s 32,000 square miles. This highly diverse workforce ranges from executives and office support staff to plant operations personnel and electrical lineman working shift schedules.

While Santee Cooper knew it was in compliance with key regulatory guidelines, the utility couldn’t easily produce the information needed to report it. Training was delivered and tracked through a variety of systems. In addition, the primary focus was on compliance — for example, to be able to check off that all employees had watched required training videos — rather than creating a culture where employees sought out learning opportunities to be safer and more productive.

The solution was Saba Learning, which combines powerful curriculum management, simplified registration, support for a myriad of delivery options, testing and assessment, certification management and compliance reporting in a single, integrated platform.

From an employee’s perspective, the implementation of Saba Learning was a tremendously positive cultural shift. Together with Saba Learning, we introduced web-based, online training that each employee could accomplish on his or her own schedule. It didn’t take our learners long to embrace the self-paced, online options — realizing flexibility benefits, time savings and improved retention of learning material.Greg Lindamood, Senior Training Instructor for Santee Cooper

ENABLING MANAGERS TO MAINTAIN COMPLIANCE

One of the drawbacks of Santee Cooper’s previous training approach was that only the utility’s Training and Development department could track usage. Saba Learning is designed to be easy and intuitive for managers and end-users alike, with little or no instruction.

Companywide testing and assessment is built right into the platform — in addition to multifaceted reporting that allows managers to maintain their business unit’s compliance and pull real-time reports as needed for employee assessment and measurement. Santee Cooper assigns certification requirements to individual employees by job title and location within the company. Each employee is automatically notified before any applicable certification expires, so there will be ample time to re-certify. Notifications include convenient links to register for the required web-based or instructor-led training.

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GREATER FLEXIBILITY THROUGH WEB-BASED TRAINING

In the past, most training at Santee Cooper had to be taken after hours — leading to significant overtime and often travel expenses for the company. Because the instructor-led courses were mandatory and typically weren’t related to an employee’s current projects, they might not be perceived as the valuable knowledge resources they were.

While the introduction of web-based training was welcomed, initially there were some obstacles due to lack of PC access and a need for employee computer skills. Once PCs were made available and Santee Cooper’s Training and Development department provided employees with some basic computer skills and an introduction to Saba Learning through on-site visits, employees could complete training as part of their shifts or at another time that suited them.

Acceptance of the system benefited from strong, early executive buy-in. The CEO and senior executive team were logging into the system and completing training from the beginning, with the CEO commenting on the solution’s ease of use.

Adoption has been universal and today every employee — from our new hires to the CEO — completes training within Saba Learning. The Saba solution aligns all the data and allows for greater engagement with the essential training for each role. In addition to compliance benefits, employees can refresh their skills-based knowledge by accessing content in completed courses as a resource, rather than as a burden or chore.Greg Lindamood, Senior Training Instructor for Santee Cooper

SAFER WORK ENVIRONMENT AND REDUCED COSTS

Reducing the number of personal injuries and motor vehicle accidents that occur on the job can have a significant business impact on the utility’s operation costs. Because of this, Santee Cooper employees participate in an incentive program for achieving the utility’s safety goals.

“In 2010 and 2011 — after full implementation of Saba Learning and completion of all employee-training requirements — our internal safety incentive awards for employees reached the highest levels in the utility’s history,” commented Lindamood. “In 2010 alone, we had our largest one-year reduction in accidents.”

In addition to keeping its employees safer, Santee Cooper is now able to easily verify 100 percent compliance with all federal-and state-mandated training requirements. This is a major success for the highly regulated utility.

Every company says they want to engage, motivate and inspire their people. As we see it, the problem is not that they can’t – it’s that they don’t have the environment that really enables their top talent to thrive. Saba creates that environment, with talent development solutions that put people and teams in the driver’s seat of their own experience, while staying aligned to your business goals. And delivering deep performance insights that connect people to business success, like no one else can. Saba. The Talent Development Company.

© 2018 Saba Software Inc. All rights reserved. Saba, the Saba logo, and the marks relating to Saba products and services referenced herein are either trademarks or registered trademarks of Saba Software, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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HIGH-ENERGY FUTURE PLANS

Santee Cooper still has a lot of plans on the drawing board for its Saba-based learning environment. The utility wants to improve the effectiveness and engagement of its workforce by generating the most relevant training materials in-house to deliver through Saba Learning. Currently, most of Santee Cooper’s content comes from third parties.

“We’re in the process of developing some regulatory training as well as skills-based training content, utilizing the instructors and field experts we have in-house,” Lindamood remarked. “Since 9/11, there have been hundreds of new regulations introduced for federal electric systems. As regulations continue to change, the training required for optimized performance will evolve. Saba Learning has given us the ability to efficiently deliver content using ‘Santee Cooper’ language, so employees will be more invested in the training and benefit from the more relevant and personalized content.”