Heavy snowfall affects UK businesses
February 2, 2009
Today has seen the heaviest snowfall in 18 years across the South East of England, and many other areas have also been affected by the severe weather. This has caused major delays to many road and rail networks, meaning a lot of workers could not get to work this morning. The first I heard about this is when a friend of mine who lives in London called me first thing this morning to gleefully announce that she was heading back to bed after not being able to get to work on the tube, bus or train! London is said to be the worst affected for travelling as this is where the transport network is most concentrated. Tonight the weather is due to turn very icy, with some areas reaching lows of minus 7 degrees, so it looks like there will be further travel chaos for commuters tomorrow. Commuters are warned to take extreme care when driving as not all roads have been gritted properly and so car tyres may not grip the roads. I’ve actually seen a few minor road accidents in the last few weeks caused by icy driving conditions.
Whilst I wasn’t affected too badly by the snow, I did have to stay at home today due to unforeseen carer leave. However this wasn’t a problem for me because I have a laptop and have recently gained home access to the work computer network and my emails, via a virtual private network (vpn). I’ve actually managed to have a very productive day at home! However this isn’t the norm where I work, and the issues with the weather today have made me realise that we don’t have suitable contingencies for when staff cannot get to work or have to go home early (as we had today)to avoid impending bad weather.
Flexible working options such as home working are seen as a great benefit to employees and are often part of employers’ recruitment and retention strategies, but what’s happened today shows that good facilities for home working can also be a great help to companies when alternatives to employees being in work are needed. Many businesses today will have suffered from a massive amount of down time with employees not being able to get to work, such as the company where my friend in London works. Flexible working plans can help to ensure no loss of productivity when circumstances impede normal working situations.
Let me know if your company has been affected by the weather, and what measures (or lack of them) were in place to cope with the loss of working time.
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