SimpliPhi CEO Catherine Von Burg Addresses COVID-19
To Our Global Partners, Customers, and Friends,
The entire SimpliPhi Power team hopes that everyone is staying safe and remaining healthy as we all respond to the numerous challenges posed by the coronavirus. We remain committed to mitigating the spread, protecting the wellbeing of our employees, combating the economic fallout and protecting the interests of medical personnel and people in need of critical power reserves globally.
As you may know, SimpliPhi Power temporarily shut-down its headquarters as of last Thursday evening after Governor Newsom of California issued a “Stay at Home” order. Though we closed the manufacturing plant, other staff have continued to work remotely from their homes in order to provide our customers and business partners continuity through vital operational functions such as sales and pricing, technical support, project development, online training, and other resources.
During the manufacturing closure, SimpliPhi Power has been making adjustments to our headquarters and production facility, following CDC Guidelines, and will be fully operational by Monday, March 30th – as we fall under the “Essential Critical Infrastructure Workforce” industry sector which includes energy, emergency response, and manufacturing. As a company, we wanted to take the time necessary to evaluate and introduce additional safety precautions to our manufacturing line, maintaining at least 6’ of distance between employees, as well as create additional hand sanitizing stations with other safety measures in place. We have implemented temporary telecommuting arrangements for employees, as well as paid sick leave to those impacted by the coronavirus, whether it is due to caring for children at home from school or illness.
In addition to keeping our core business functions and facilities operational, we have taken measures well in advance of this global pandemic to take on additional reserve inventory of raw materials and have been in close communications with our suppliers so that once manufacturing is up and running, production will be at full capacity. We will update our customers and partners on any significant changes to our current lead times as the realities of the coronavirus continue to evolve.
We, like you, have been closely monitoring the unprecedented challenges posed by the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic. Both the health and economic hardships being endured by individuals, families, communities, businesses and governments across the world are staggering and have profoundly altered every aspect of our lives. Though daunting, the resilience of our employees, global customers and business partners, as well as the shared mission to look forward, leveraging innovation and technology to create sustainable solutions predicated on renewable energy, certainly provides hope.
It is within this context that I wanted to personally reach out and share the steps SimpliPhi Power is taking to ensure the health, safety and wellbeing of our employees, our customers, our partners and the communities we serve around the world. Companies have a tremendous opportunity and an equal degree of responsibility, to be positive catalysts for change in the lives of the people they employ, the customers they serve, the partners they collaborate with, and the communities they impact.
Our hearts go out to all those who are facing health and economic hardships as a result of the coronavirus. With customers and partners across the globe impacted by its spread, we feel a tremendous sense of accountability to ensure that people and communities continue to have secure access to energy, so that critical infrastructure delivering products and services such as hospitals, clinics and emergency shelters continue to have power and remain operational.
Resilience, energy security and empowering communities are core to SimpliPhi’s mission and the work that we all do as a team, from manufacturing, to shipping, engineering, sales and project development, is all the more critical to the world, to medical personnel combating the coronavirus, and to our economic security. As a company, we are part of the solution to many of the serious problems in the world today, from climate change to energy poverty.
I am so thankful to have this team, our global network of partners and customers, to face these challenges together.
Sincerely,
Catherine Von Burg