The office is rarely closed, the management will occasionally issue a “necessary employees only” message or send people home early before the evening rush. I have AWD and snow tires, so I’ll come in unless it’s truly awful or if the state asks people to stay off the roads, then I work from home.
Employees are expected to show up at work if no official announcement has been made. Otherwise, employees can make a judgement call… If the roads around you are too dangerous, then don’t come in! Of course, you have to give up a vacation day, which leads to many people opting to risk driving in when they should really stay home. (Some departments - mine included - will allow you to work extra hours to make up the time instead.)
Like corporate policy regarding driving home from a worksite after normal business hours, I’m expecting this policy to change if an employee dies behind the wheel. 
During a decent snowstorm, all the plows will be out plowing about until all snow is removed, but they start on the primary roads forthwith and leave the residential neighbourhoods to second last and cul-de-sacs to last. London bases the size of its snowplough fleet on usually being able to get most residential streets cleaned up within a day of the end of the dump, rather than exceed the provincial minimum requirements by using more plows and plow operators to get the residential streets cleared earlier.
They meet the minimum plowing standards set out by the province: Law Document English View | Ontario.ca .
For the most part, roads are categorized by volume and speed of traffic.
High volume and high speed roads are not permitted to have as much snow on them and are not permitted to have that snow on them for as long a time as low volume and low speed roads.
For example, a road with a speed limit of 71 kph or higher or more than an average of 12,000 vehicles per day must have its plowing commencing as soon as practicable once there is 2.5 cm of snow and must be plowed down to this level within four hours after it has stopped snowing, whereas a residential neighbourhood street with a speed limit of 50 kph and an average of 50 to 499 vehicles per day must have its plowing commencing as soon as practicable once there is 10 cm of snow and must be plowed down to this level within 24 hours after it has stopped snowing. There are no depth/time requirements for roads with less than 50 vehicles a day with speeds of 80 kph or less, so folks who live on a cul de sac or on a lonely country road will wait until everything else is cleaned up, even if it takes more than a day after the storm ends.
With these minimum standards in place, and with an eye to historical weather, the City sets is equipment and personnel levels, not wanting to spend any more than it must on plowing.
A chicken in every pot, and a Peterbilt with a plow on every cul-de-sac would be nice, but the provincial minimum standard is what London and pretty much the rest of the municipalities in the province follow.
For a bit of historical perspective, I remember the big blizzard of 1978, which shut down much of the northeastern US for a week or more. I remember school being closed for a full week. People were told to stay off the roads unless it was absolutely necessary. My mother worked for the telephone company as a directory assistance operator and my father drove her to work. She had a card that she could present to show that she was essential personnel and therefore the driving was necessary. And even then, the phone company stockpiled cots and other bedding somewhere in the building in case people were snowed in. I remember that the radio stations asked for people with four-wheel drive vehicles to volunteer to drive doctors and other medical staff to the hospitals. (4WD was far less common forty years ago.)
And then in college a friend was a Russian emigre who lived in Leningrad/Saint Petersburg until he was twelve years old. He told us that the schools there never shut down for snow days.
I work in a large grocery store. In general, the official party line is that your life/safety is more important than your work, so if you can’t get to work safely on time, you should arrive safely late or stay home altogether. I’m not aware that the store has ever closed for snowy weather, but smaller stores sometimes do-- my store is big enough that if half the people scheduled don’t come in, details like the salad bar may get skipped, but every department should have some person in it.
People may use vacation time or personal days if they have them and want to be paid for missed work. Otherwise, hope it snows early in the week so that you can make up your time on another day or you’ll have a short paycheck.
Snow scares bring out all the shoppers, but snow also messes with delivery schedules, so the day after snow can be no fun from the dealing with the customers perspective. “What do you mean, you don’t have bananas?” ( or milk or bread or whatever).
According to Wikipedia, we got 0.3 inches of snow in 1976, the largest amount recorded. I’m sure we’d get break time to go take pictures, if we had a flurry during the day. Odds are against a snow day.
Floods are more likely, and we’re required to report for those.
I work in a public school in suburban DC. Most snow or ice that would require me to allow extra time to clean off my car is going to cause either a 2-hour delay or closing. I’m salaried, so it doesn’t affect my pay. It’s a very large district that buses students all over so they have to go by the weather in the worst part of the district, even if another part is mostly fine. In recent years we’ve had anywhere from 1-10 snow days and usually 5+ 2-hour delays. Last year we closed 5 times for sleet/ice that melted juuust after the time when a 2-hour delay would have been an option. A bus slid off the road into a ditch and nearly rolled one morning when they didn’t delay and I think it made them very cautious for the rest of the winter. This winter is supposed to be snowier than usual. We’ll see.
I get text message alerts and they make the call between 4:30-5am. We’ve already had one snow day, two weeks ago. First they called a 2-hour delay and then when things got worse instead of better, decided to close. That’s happened a few times, too.
I work at a university. It closes anytime the local public schools close.
I’m a salaried employee and it doesn’t effect my pay.
One of my grandpas worked for a natural gas company and lived out in the country on an unpaved road. On at least one occasion there was a heavy snow that made it impossible for him to leave his driveway and the company sent a helicopter to pick him up.
My dad was a medical professional. During the blizzard of 1978, the company hired a helicopter to pick him up to take him to work.
For me, when the roads are closed due to weather they cancel work (which is rare) and sometimes they take it out of our PTO, sometimes not.
I work for a government IT contractor. We work in the office because collaboration is more effective that way, but if you have an Internet connection you can work anywhere. The company never gives people off due to weather emergencies.
When I used to work for another much bigger contractor in the pre-Internet days, they also never closed. If you could not come to the office due to weather it was either take leave or you had to make up the time.
The federal government will close at the drop of a hat and pay its workers, and workers even get paid after a federal shutdown. But contractors don’t.
Interesting. The university I work for closes and delays about half as often as the public schools. In the past two weeks we’ve already had three storms (and winter’s still over three weeks away! aaahhh!) and we had a two hour delay the first storm. The public schools all closed for at least two each and some for all three.
I’m hourly and a snow day is a day off with pay that doesn’t come out of our PTO. I would like it a lot more if ought didn’t mean spending the day shoveling snow…
Federal employee here in the Washington DC area. The government will close if there is significant snowfall. Employees with a telework agreement (and it’s pretty common now) are required to telework or use leave.
Another Fed checking in, but I work on a military base. If the base closes (Base Commanders discretion), or opens late or closes early, we are authorized absence. If not, we have to use our leave. We get more than a dusting only about every 5 years or so - but they are also quick to close the base since people aren’t used to the conditions.
Telework is very rare out here due to the nature of the work. I can log onto the base network from home, but not my Program network.
I work for a company that makes industrial controls. Our company is mostly engineers, so if there’s a bad snow day, we just work from home and VPN into our work network. Everyone in my department works from home one day per week anyway, so we’re already set up for it.
The few employees that we have that aren’t able to work from home usually end up getting paid time off.
I work from my family room in Minnesota - or when I’m on vacation from my laptop in England, or from my cell phone in Disneyworld. Weather doesn’t stop me.
My employer does not recognize the concept of “snow days”. WInter of 2009 / 2010, when we had blizzard after blizzard after blizzard, nothing. Even when it was illegal to be on the road except for emergency… if you couldn’t work remotely, you were expected to take personal leave.
I’ve been very fortunate that I can work remotely (nowadays it’s full time, back then it could happen if needed) so it wasn’t a big hassle, but for people who were genuinely unable to travel, it sucked.
Usually something like this:
I live in California, so “snow days” aren’t really a thing here. I did get a “smoke day” off a couple weeks back, though.
Would prefer never to get one of those again.
I work in a ferro allloy/chemicals/polymers complex (used to be Union Carbide) that operates 24-7. You work until you are relieved. On bad snow days, the office people and engineers stay home and are paid. However, operations people who are unable to make it in go unpaid. This leaves the stranded operations people in the plant in charge of the whole asylum till relieved, no matter how long it takes.
In my 44 years, I’ve been stuck in the plant twice due to snow storms, the longest was for 38 hours before relief was able to make it in. In the middle of it all, we lost power and steam… what fun!