At this time of year thoughts are starting to turn towards Christmas, with the rounds of parties and team drinks beginning and that lovely long break between Christmas and the new year on the horizon for some.
However, for employers, as excited talk of the possibility of a ‘White Christmas’ starts to buzz around the office, the spectre of snow days between now and the start of spring looms large. Statistics provided by the Federation of Small Businesses indicate that during periods of heavy snowfall some 20% of the UK population doesn’t make it into work. The cost to UK businesses varies but during the heavy snow of 2009 was estimated to be in excess of £1.2 billion.
However, a snow day doesn’t have to mean that the business suffers to the extent that it may have done in years gone by, as there are numerous ways to make sure that it keeps ticking over until the snow clears again.
Have a snow day policy – this is obviously going to be more important if your office is located in an area often affected by heavy snowfall, but is also very useful even in a large and well-connected urban environment like London. If you can set out what should happen on a snow day in advance, and in clear and unambiguous terms, then there will be no confusion when such a day actually arrives. Make sure this includes a notification policy so you can keep track of who is coming in to the office and who is at home.
Avoid inflexibility – the amount of time employees spend stuck on transport during periods of heavy snow is a waste for all concerned so, as long as the business allows for it, don’t be rigid in insisting that employees come into work. The better alternative is to offer the option of home working on snow days, as you are far more likely to get a full day’s work from an employee who hasn’t spent three hours sitting in a traffic jam, or on a bus, in the freezing cold, than one who has.
Make use of technology – most businesses can handle remote working in some shape or form these days and, whilst you may not want to make this a permanent feature for staff, it is enormously useful for events like snow days. Set up a contingency plan for days such as this that makes full use of all the technology available – schedule Skype video calls to replace meetings, give employees remote access to internal databases and activate cloud storage so that documents can still be produced, saved, shared and finalised no matter where the contributors are located.
Be prepared – there is little use in trying to set up your remote working systems, Skype calls or cloud computing when the snow day has actually arrived. Instead plan for this in advance, include the detail in the snow day policy, perhaps even provide some training on snow day procedure and then you will have the reassurance of knowing that the business will continue to function smoothly no matter what the weather.