Santee Cooper, a South Carolina state-owned electric and water utility, implemented the Saba Learning solution to provide comprehensive training to its diverse workforce of 1,850 employees and meet regulatory requirements. Saba Learning consolidated Santee Cooper's training programs into a single, integrated platform and increased accessibility of online training. This enabled employees to complete required courses more flexibly. With Saba Learning, Santee Cooper achieved 100% compliance with training standards, reduced accidents to record low levels, and saved costs by eliminating overtime for off-hour training.

1. Case Study
Santee Cooper
Saba Powers Enterprisewide Learning
Solution to Help Utility Santee Cooper Meet
Regulatory and Corporate Requirements
Industry
Utilities
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
ƒƒ Create a culture where employees seek out
learning opportunities to work safer and
more productively, rather than simply to meet
regulatory requirements
ƒƒ Enable managers to maintain their businessunit’s compliance, with multi-faceted reporting
options to demonstrate 100% compliance with
Federal and state regulations
ƒƒ Automatically notify employees when required
certifications are expiring to allow ample time
to re-certify
ƒƒ Reduce overtime and travel expenses paid to
employees for training outside work hours
ƒƒ 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
Solution
ƒƒ Saba Learning
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 endusers. 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.
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
Adoption has been universal and
example, to be able to check off
that all employees had watched
today every employee — from our
required training videos — rather
new hires to the CEO — completes
than creating a culture where
training within Saba Learning. The
employees sought out learning
Saba solution aligns all the data
opportunities to be safer and
and allows for greater engagement
more productive.
“
with the essential training for each
role.
”
Greg Lindamood
Senior Training Instructor
Santee Cooper
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,” said Greg Lindamood, Senior
Training Instructor for Santee Cooper. “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.”

2. Case Study
n
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.
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,” Lindamood explained. “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.”
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% compliance with all Federaland state-mandated training requirements. This is a major
success for the highly regulated utility.
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.”
Saba enables organizations to build a transformative workplace where they can leverage their people
networks to become more competitive through innovation, speed, agility, and trust.
© 2012 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
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