WORKPLACE APPLICATION $1$: HOMEWORK

$29$

PROMPT

Snow in Texas

The following email was sent by the CEO of American Electric Power $($AEP$)-$ Texas, Judith Talavera, to Joe Murphy, the Director of Customer Services at the company headquarters in Corpus Christi, TX$.$

AEP Texas, a unit of American Electric Power, delivers electricity to over one million consumers, serving homes, businesses and industries in south and west Texas.

To: Joe Murphy, Director of Customer Services

From: Judith Talavera, CEO

Subject: This is the most snow that we've seen in Texas in years!

Hey Joe,

What a crazy last few days it has been here in the great state of Texas! I hope you and your family are staying warm we've seen some record$-$breaking temperatures for this time of the year. And how about all of this snow? Let me tell you, it's been almost impossible to get to work. If it weren't for Zoom, there's no way we could've gotten any work done over the past week. I heard that the city of Abilene $-$ one of our biggest clients that we provide power to$,$ as you know $-$ set a record for the most snowfall ever measured in the city, a shocking $14\mathrm{.}8$ inches! The previous record, set on April $5,1995,$ was only $9\mathrm{.}3$ inches. And get this $-$ the temperatures in the Abilene and San Angelo areas are currently lower than the temperatures in Anchorage, Alaska! Honestly, I never thought I$\text{'}$d see the day. Anyways, almost $75\%$ of the city is currently without power due to ice, fallen trees and downed power lines. We've already got crews out on the roads fixing lines and restoring power to the main parts of the city. However, we don't have nearly enough people to handle the influx of customer calls coming in every hour. To address this issue, we will be temporarily transferring $366$ employees to the customer service department. This will allow us to handle complaints more efficiently, prioritize areas with hospitals and schools that need power back first, and retain the city of Abilene as one of our major clients. Additionally this will provide us with a framework for future customer service issues. The employees to be transferred will come from three currently underutilized departments: Investor Relations, Risk Assessment and Operations & Logistics. Of our $2,500$ total employees in these departments, $820$ come from Capital Investor Relations, $1,000$ come from Risk Assessment, and $680$ come from Operations & Logistics Management. We are going to transfer $20\%$ of the employees from Investor Relations, $10\%$ of the employees from Risk Assessment and $15\%$ of the employees from Operations & Logistics. We estimate that this transfer will cost approximately $$200,750$ in training expenses, $$575,000$ in administrative expenses, and $$1,540,000$ in salaries and wages. Although this measure is only temporary, we need this done A$.$S$.$A$.$P and there will be a whole lot of paperwork involved. If we can't get a handle on this increase in complaints soon, we will be at risk of dealing with more outages in south and west Texas, increased pushback from our customer base, negative publicity, losses of millions of dollars in service revenue. I know how crazy this is$,$ but we have to control what we can control, and that means providing people with peace$-$of$-$mind when things are at their worst. Nevertheless, we will get through this!

Sincerely,

Judith Talavera

CEO, AEP Texas

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