Author: Joules

All this talk of earthquakes and the approaching hurricane makes me think about how much it sucks to work in bad weather.

Not only is it awful, but sometimes making your way into the office is more dangerous than it’s worth. As a business owner, how do you decide whether to close the office for bad weather?

Typically if there is an ice storm or snowstorm, offices will allow their employees to work from home if they have the type of job that they can do remotely. However, many jobs leave it up to their employees to determine for themselves whether they feel comfortable driving to work. Unfortunately for the employee, if you decide not to come in you may have to use your vacation time to cover the hours.

This doesn’t really seem fair, does it? It’s not like the employee wanted to stay home (well maybe they did, but let’s pretend they didn’t). They just didn’t feel safe traveling to work in ice, snow, hurricane conditions, etc. So why should they be punished for using good judgment?

Of course, on the flip side – for those employees who did come into the office it isn’t fair if those who stayed home get a day off for free.

If you’re in a customer service position such as a salon, restaurant or retail store, you could be disappointing your customers by closing the business for the day. Or, you could be saving that lady who wanted her roots touched up from having a car accident, just by cancelling her appointment.

It’s really quite a difficult situation to deal with as a business owner and my suggestion to you is to keep your decision fair and consistent.

Out of all my jobs, the best way anyone dealt with weather closings and delays was when I worked for the government. You called the hotline in the morning and they told you whether to come to work or not. It wasn’t depending on how comfortable you felt driving, whether you had 4WD or if you lived further than a certain number of miles away from the office.

It was fair and consistent. Nobody could complain that they deserved brownie points for hiking 10 miles through avalanches or sandstorms. Nobody had to feel like a wimp for not testing their car’s luck with a drive on 695 during a national emergency.

When you’re trying to decide whether to close the office, here are some questions to ask yourself:

• Is it really imperative to your customers that you open your business that day or would it be safer for them if you closed?

• Is it better for staff morale to close the office? Sometimes showing your employees that you care about their wellbeing is more important than the bottom line.

Whatever you decide, make sure to treat everyone fairly. If you let one person work from home, you should make it an option for everyone (if possible).

If you let your employees decide for themselves, instead of punishing those who don’t come in, think about rewarding those who do. Letting them dress casually for the day (if it’s typically a formal or business casual environment) is a great perk if it’s snowing outside. Even better, provide those who show up with bagels & donuts or lunch!

So, how about that earthquake?

Living in Maryland most of my life, I’ve only experienced one earthquake which was just a little shake when I was in high school.  No big deal.

Yesterday’s earthquake was rated at a 5.9 and was the most shaking we’ve felt in the East in over 100 years. It’s also less than a month away from the 10 year anniversary of September 11^th, so people were totally freaking out.

I was totally freaking out.

I was sitting at my desk and at first I thought that someone was walking very heavily down the hallway. When it continued and got stronger, I then thought that they were doing construction on our building. About 20 seconds into it I came to the conclusion that it was either an earthquake or a bomb had gone off. I grabbed up my purse and cellphone and walked quickly out to our front reception area where there was a report on the TV. After finding out it was in fact an earthquake, I went outside to wait with a bunch of coworkers until we felt it was safe go to back in the building.

My hands were shaking and my heart was going a mile a minute. Logically I knew that it was just a little earthquake and nobody was even injured (that I heard about), but my mind went straight back to September 11.

On the morning of 9/11 I was working at NSA. I was on the phone with my mom the moment that the first plane hit the twin towers. She was watching it on TV and told me about it. As soon as I got off the phone with her, we found out that there was intelligence suggesting that one of the planes may be heading to the NSA. They evacuated all non-essential personnel in our building and as we were quickly walking out of the building, military in full uniform were running in.

It was literally one of the scariest moments of my life and yesterday’s earthquake gave me that same shot of fear in my body.

In this day of technology, it’s ironic that just as on 9/11 the cell towers were immediately overwhelmed due to people calling and texting their loved ones. It took me 50 minutes to get a text out from my phone and hear back that my husband was okay. Over an hour later I still wasn’t able to make any calls from my cellphone and when I used my landline I kept getting a busy signal. Rather than being a fun distraction or a marketing tool, I saw a real value in Facebook since I was able to check status updates and see that my family was fine.

This was just a little earthquake.

But it still scared the crap out of me.