Staff will be allowed to return to WECC’s Salt Lake City office on a voluntary basis beginning April 5, CEO Melanie Frye said Wednesday.
“We’ve emphasized the ‘voluntary,’” Frye told WECC’s Board of Directors in announcing the decision at its virtual quarterly meeting. The regional entity’s remote meeting policy will continue at least until June, she said.
WECC temporarily closed its Utah headquarters — and a smaller satellite office in Vancouver, Wash. — last March after the U.S. declared a national emergency as the novel coronavirus spread.
Like other organizations in the electricity sector, WECC took a cautious approach to reopening amid the pandemic, incrementally extending its closure and virtual meeting policies while infection rates remained high. (See WECC Taking Wait-and-See on COVID Measures.)
A recent reduction in case counts and increased dissemination of vaccines in the Salt Lack City area prompted the decision to reopen the office to those employees comfortable with returning, Frye said.
“We recognize that not everyone will be able to obtain a vaccine by that time and that each person has a different health situation for themselves and that of their household,” Frye said, adding that Utah Gov. Spencer Cox recently announced that he expects all adults in the state will be eligible for vaccination after April 1.
“But we know that will take some time to fully deploy,” she said.
WECC is also working on a new “flex-work” policy that will be explained to employees in more detail later this week, Frye said.
“I think what’s important to us is to really maintain the lessons that we’ve learned over the course of the last year and our ability to be productive and effectively meet the needs of our stakeholders and do our important work in a remote status,” she said.
In an email to ERO Insider, WECC Manager of Communications and Outreach Julie Booth said specific office protocols will be in place for staff when they begin to return April 5, including a mask-wearing and physical distancing requirement when moving about the office.
Employees must also check in using the COVID ClearPass application on any day before coming into the office and meet the “health attestation” requirements outlined in the program. WECC will observe a daily maximum occupancy of 50 people, just over a third of its total headcount. No more than half of any one team can be present in the office on a given day “for business continuity purposes,” WECC said.
The RE is encouraging at-risk employees to continue working remotely, including those who are over 65, are immunocompromised, or have respiratory or other chronic health conditions.
Fry also informed the board that WECC will permanently close its Washington office after being approached by a neighboring tenant who was seeking additional space.
“We weren’t looking to close this office or to reduce our space in Vancouver, but this became an opportunity,” Frye said. She spoke with the 12 employees who work at the office, many of whom travel frequently, and learned they have “been very happy and productive working from home.”
“So it was kind of a happy accident, I guess, that this tenant was looking to expand space and the landlord was willing to allow us out of our lease,” she said.
