Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks' ethos, "if it's not safe, we don't do it", was promoted in its first ever 'Health, Safety and Wellbeing Week' for its customer contact centre employees. The week included demonstrations, discussions and debates on SSEN's support for health, approach to safety, and promotion of its employees' wellbeing.
The Health, Safety and Wellbeing week, commenced on the Monday 9 September in Portsmouth, with each of the five working days assigned a focus, and a programme of activities to support and promote the importance of safety to SSEN both for its staff and customers.
Mental health awareness was the focus of the first day's activities, with Jody Westbrook, a mental health awareness representative providing ways to understand and manage issues associated with mental wellbeing. The Samaritans gave an introductory presentation into their work and the importance of health and wellbeing. SSEN's Customer Contact Centre raised over £10k for the Samaritans, and the charity discussed how contributions enable the charity to answer more than 5 million calls every year supporting those in need.
Control engineers and fault dispatchers led Tuesday's session, explaining how they react to network faults, prioritising and ensuring safety and every step. They emphasised the importance of systems and processes in ensuring everyone gets home safely after work.
The Priority Services Register (PSR), and support for customers that may need extra assistance during power cuts was the focus of Wednesday's activities. The PSR, is free to sign up to and can provide a range of support, from tailored advice, access to warm food or charge points, or generators for those with medical equipment that depends upon electricity. SSEN's telephony advisors were provided with a session on how to better serve customers with dementia.
On Thursday, SSEN employees visited a substation to learn about the equipment used and how the network is safely managed. This included use of a small-scale replica network that is used as a teaching tool for how the network restoration process is managed and implemented.
The final day saw SSEN's network protection team give a presentation with real-life examples of the dangerous electricity equipment tampering jobs they attend. This reiterated the importance of electricity and network safety, and why SSEN prioritises the promotion of its ethos 'if its not safe we don't do it.' The week concluded with SSEN's telephony advisors and control engineers discussing the importance of working together, to provide as much information as possible when raising network damage calls to better assist the fault dispatchers and control engineers.
Hayley Joynson, head of Customer Contact Centre South said
"I am delighted the inaugural Health, Safety and Wellbeing week was such a success with over a hundred SSEN employees learning about the breadth and depth of activity we undertake everyday to support our ethos 'if its not safe we don't do it'.
"Health, safety and wellbeing is at the heart of everything we do, for our employees and customers. Education has a critical role as we continue to seek to build upon the positive progress we have made. I want to thank the Samaritans and participating employees in making the week so worthwhile."
For further information on SSEN's priority services and to check if you or someone you know might qualify please see here: https://www.ssen.co.uk/PriorityServices/