Supporting Our Communities to Help Fight COVID-19
Here at CTEK we have been amazed, but not surprised, at the response from our staff, customers, and local people in the communities in which we operate. In a time where everyone has been affected in one way or another by COVID-19, our communities have really pulled together - partnerships, care, compassion, and resilience have really shined through.
CTEK has been quick and active in our response to ensure we are making a contribution to our local communities, nationally and internationally, during this challenging time. Establishing a ‘Supporting our communities’ workstream, and involving staff across divisions and continents, has helped us to have a strong focus. These are just some of the ways we are helping:
Supporting our staff: to protect our staff, all European and US staff are working from home until further notice. We have also stopped all face to face meetings with our customers and suppliers in areas that are impacted by the outbreak of COVID-19. We are instead using videoconferencing, telephone, and e-mail to ensure continuous support.
Supporting local communities: and since we aren’t using our offices that much at the moment, we don’t need the same level of office cleaning at our headquarters in Sweden. We have donated these cleaning hours to a local grocery store in nearby Hedemora, where the staff is instead cleaning shopping carts and other public-facing areas of the store to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Supporting emergency services: there are so many vehicles being used to transport supplies, services, and workers critical to the COVID-19 response. We have worked with emergency services in the UK, Germany, and North America, providing them with chargers to help increase fleet reliability and avoid battery-related breakdowns – so they can continue to carry out their incredible work.
Supporting local business: many small businesses have already been negatively impacted by the spread of the COVID-19. We are trying, where at all possible, to support local business in the areas in which we operate, negotiating longer-term agreements that will continue once things start to return to normal. One example of this is new contracts with local hotels and restaurants close to CTEK offices.
For CTEK it is important that we carry on with this work into the future, something which is very important to all of our staff. We continue to be amazed every day by the contribution that people all over the world are making to support each other to combat COVID-19, and are happy to be making a contribution to these efforts.
