I’m sure nobody has escaped the recent freeze or if you have been lucky enough not to be affected you will not have missed the continued news reports on the chaos caused.
Many people haven’t made it into work, not because they can’t get there but because they cannot get their children to school. How prepared are we as businesses to support our employees in this predicament?
Would it be crazy to think about allowing employees to bring their children into work, find a quiet part of the office where they can continue with their homework or reading up other school books…? The productivity may not be 100% with the inevitable child interruptions but it’s still better to have a %age productivity than none at all.
Or should we be trying to make working from home on such days an easier option again with the same outcomes? There are many systems now like ‘Log Me In’ so the employee can access their own desktop from their home.
The stress, not to mention revenue loss, that is caused from both the business and the employer could be greatly reduced and employees are not forced to lose out on pay or take annual leave for a mini force majeure.
If you have been affected how would you like the situation to be handled? What do you think could be done to make this less of an impact for everyone involved?
Hi
I think that we should promote working from home as an option in circumstances like those you describe. Most large businesses have the facility to share our work computer with our home computers. Remote working would be the way to go as far as I am concerned. A small financial outlay to get a secur id card and 5 minutes talking to the Ford IT help desk and away you go. This does mean that you need to leave your work computer logged on but that is no great hardship.