Watching the Stormwatch closings crawl across the TV screen last night. A few companies reported that some shifts were cancelled, but a couple others told employees to report this morning.
This is after a “historic” winter storm. Interstates closed, schools closed, shopping malls closed, etc.
Anyone who lives very far from work is going to have trouble making it to work. If they have kids, the kids will be home from school, and it’s probably going to be hard to find a sitter.
But employees who live close to their work might be able to make it without too much trouble. And we all know people who will risk their safety to get to work, either from the work ethic or because they can’t afford a short paycheck. Or because they don’t believe the warnings.
So what does a business do? Should they stay open and provide work for employees who can make it without risking their lives, or should they close to keep employees from taking unnecessary risks?
If it’s your company, what do you do? Have you ever risked your life to get to work? Does your company expect you to come in when travel is dangerous?
If your employees can be easily replaced, make 'em drive in. What do you care if they die? However, if your employees would be hard to replace, or you just like 'em, shut down.
That’s pretty much the way every place I’ve worked at has done it. I know a guy who got fired for being ten minutes late during an ice storm- this was at a mail shipping warehouse. In other words, the sort of job where the workers are just a cog which can be replaced.
At my current job, everyone here has a specific skill… when the weather turns bad, the office shuts down so we can get home safely.
Many businesses here didn’t have the choice but to close today and yesterday. State highways in the area closed at noon and I think they are just reopening now. I imagine it would be frowned upon for an employer to insist that an employee not only risk his/her life but go around blockades that have been installed in many towns now (including my own). If the blockade is down and you go around it, you get a fine and if you get stranded, it’s tough cookies for you. My office has a “come in if you can” policy. If you decide the roads are too bad to drive on, you just give a call and it’s no problem.
At my current job and my last job, the office was generally open, and those who wanted to brave the roads in bad weather did so; those who didn’t could use a vacation day. (Actually, my boss just talked about this in our monthly meeting yesterday, emphasizing that it is totally to each person’s discretion based on distance to be traveled and feelings of safety – older or smaller car vs. new 4WD SUV, e.g.)
I was selfish during the ice storms here. My drive is usually 45 mintues each way in good weather (36 miles). There was no way I was going to travel throughout the entire D/FW Metroplex on icy roads just to get to work to have an extra stressful day because of all the absences. I’d probably have my arm twisted to stay late as well.
I’m just not that damn loyal. I figure once every year or two, there will be one day which shuts down the city. If it falls on a workday, I’m calling in.
My company apparently has a policy that they do not shut down their offices for weather. Ever.
3 or 4 years ago we had a major blizzard - nearly 2 feet of snow (for the Midatlantic region, that’s a LOT). It was not just unsafe, but actually illegal to drive - I believe the states in the DC area put some sort of emergency plan in place where you were not allowed to be out on the roads unless you were emergency personnel.
I had to eat the vacation time. (Nowadays, the technology is in place that we could do all our client-related work from home so it’s less of an issue but then, we had to be physically in the office to get to the network).
My policy is that no member of my staff is allowed to die enroute to work. If the weather is that bad, call in and leave voicemail. I’d much rather answer any questions about why I approved administrative leave than deal with the hiring process. Of course, anyone that has a hearing scheduled has to show up if they can’t get it continued.
Fortunately, down here we pretty much close the state if we get much snow/ice.
Me too. We’ll reduce to skeleton staff if the weather looks bad enough, and try to juggle things so the folks who live nearby cover for those who have to travel further. But somebody’s got to do the critical operations.
We had one nurse last weekend after the blizzard call in, and say she couldn’t make it because her driveway wasn’t cleared. She was told to get busy with a shovel. Then she demurred, saying she had two dogs at home to care for. She was told she’d had the dogs before the blizzard came along, and had agreed to work then.
She got there 3 hours late, but she got there, and necessary care was performed.
The warden used to have a 4WD vehicle to use, courtesy of the government, and he’d use it to get to key personnel to get them into work if needed. But the public outcry was so great over using taxpayer money to give him a fancy 4WD to use, that it was re-possessed.
Generally no. The customers come first. If you live in an area or do business in an area that snows, being able to get to your job is expected.
I worked for Home Depot for a long time. People expect HD to be open so they can buy snow shovels salt and such. I only needed a dozen people in the store to keep it going. Anyone above that was great to have because we’d get alot of down stocking done with hardly any customers around. If people had a sick day/personal day I didn’t care if they stayed home.
Some other managers wouldn’t accept call outs for snow. I thought this was kinda stupid. While we sold a lot of salt and sand bags, the snow devastated the sales in the rest of the store, not many people buying cabinets or shingles during snow storms. We would have to cut hours later in the week to make our numbers work out anyhow.
In a manufacturing setting or call center it could be damaging to the business if they shut down. It doesn’t snow everywhere and people that aren’t in a snowy area are still going to expect their widgets on time or your phones answered.
If there is a declared state of emergency all bets are off. I’d expect any business to be closed as the state doesn’t allow anyone on the roads without good cause. Making widgets just won’t cut it.
I work for myself. I will generally cancel any calls to a persons house mainly because they expect me to do so. If I have work at a commercial or construction site I will get that out of the way instead. Otherwise I’ll spend time in my office dealing with the ever present pile of paperwork.
It depends on the nature of the business, and in my experience, even in Boston, where three feet of snow isn’t considered that big a deal, most employers aren’t going to give you a terribly hard time for staying home when it happens, and encourage it if you have the technology to work from home.
Well, *my * company’s life insurance policy pays **double ** if I die on my way to work!
It’s very different living in the mountains. We get snow and lots of it. 17 feet so far at my house this year, with March and April being our snowiest months, we have lots more to come.
Anyway, we are ready for it. Nearly everyone has a four wheel drive, and everyone has snow tires. Also, they do a fantastic job on the roads. Like I said, we are ready.
I work for County Government. In 16 years on the job, I can only remember two times we where allowed to go home early if we wanted too.
And ‘allowed’ is not quite the right word. I work for reasonable people. One time my boss called me and said I might want to think about hitting the road because the weather turned so nasty.
I have only missed two days of work because of snow.
Hong Kong will officially shut down for typhoons. I forget the classifications, but there are different flags. so if it’s a flag 7 typhoon at 6:00 am, then schools are shut. The stock market doesn’t open, it’s a bank holiday, etc. There was also a second checkpoint, maybe 11:00 AM, where if the storm had gotten better and it was reduced to a flag 5 typhoon, then it became a regular work day as of 1:00 pm.
When i worked investment banking in HK, there would be a lot of drunk stock brokers praying that 11:00 meant more drinks and not going in to trade drunk. :o
This makes me laugh- I am a prof in a State college (mostly commuter). Every year we get memo about who needs to come in when classes are canceled due to weather. Every year the memo says the same thing:
“Faculty are non-essential employees”. (Yes, I know what it means and all, but still…)
The funny thing is, we always suspected that’s how the administration really feels!
[admin] “This place would be great except for those annoying profs” [/admin]
We don’t get much severe weather here, but there was a minor ice storm a month or two ago and my clinic closed a couple hours early–partly because there were no patients there anyway, so it was stupid to pay us to sit around all day, and partly because it was dangerous to be on the streets. They’re generally good about call-outs anyway, but in this case the admins decided that for all of us traveling it was at least a good idea to let us drive home while there was still daylight for visibility. It wasn’t much of an ice storm, as far as ice storms go, but I wasn’t going to complain about getting home a few hours early.