Inclement Weather

Here we go again - Bad weather strikes!!! Britain grinds to a halt as the snow and freezing weather takes even more of a grip. Airports close down, motorways shut and other major and minor roads become impassible and the advice is to stay at home if you possibly can. Keep warm in front of the fire and stay safe.

But for a Human Resource Manager you know what the question will be - My staff can't get in to work today, what do I do?

There is no easy answer to that one and, inevitably, those who manage to get to work after trudging through the snow for hours on end, will see things differently from those employees who have not been able to get to work at all.

Many companies nowadays will have a policy on dealing with such matters but as always its better if you have some sort of policy in place to manage such situations. Then at least everybody will have some idea of where the goal posts are.

In simple legal terms, employees are obliged to turn up for work in terms of their contracts of employment. So even in extreme conditions you would be within your rights not to pay somebody who had not been able to come to work because of the conditions or public transport was off.

But doing this might have negative impacts on the workforce. This is all about employee engagement. Think of different ways of managing this - how about taking annual leave or using flexitime?, could the employee work the hours at a later date?, could the employee work from home? As a manager and an employee you have different viewpoints.

The "good news" for you as an employer is that your competitors are probably also struggling to get their staff to work so if you can gain any sort of advantage in getting staff to work in the office or the factory, or work from remote sites, you will see benefits later. You must avoid that unnecessary downtime.

A clear message is that there's no definite answer how to manage staff in circumstances like these. As you can see from the photo above, it has been snowing here overnight and it continues to snow as I write this in the afternoon.

(c) Iain Williamson 5.1.10