Almost the very first thing that gets mention in the media when snow descends on the UK is the travel chaos preventing people from getting into work. Employers are worried that their employees are skiving; employees are worried that they won’t get paid because they can’t travel into work.
First of all, skiving is relatively rare not simply because people don’t want to let their employers down, but also because they know that those who do manage to get in will have to work harder because of the lack of people. They don’t want to let their colleagues down.
Of course this is one time when as many people as possible should be working from home. Again skiving isn’t very likely; as someone who has had occasion to work from home myself, you tend to work harder from home than you do from work. There is perhaps less clock-watching and more goal orientated work. This doesn’t work for all kinds of work, but sometimes employers are just a little too reluctant to allow this.
In addition working from home needs practice – you need to make appropriate arrangements so that people can do their work from home, and test those arrangements. As an example, there are places that have arrangements to allow working from home which rely on systems sized for normal levels of working from home – these will often get overloaded during adverse weather. Plus people need to be confident that they can do their work from home, and find out what works and what does not – for that they need practice.
One thing that gets left out from the usual discussion is what about the people who do make it into work ? We hear that most employers do not penalise those who cannot make it in, which is fair enough. But what reward do those who do struggle in get for going the extra mile ? Don’t we deserve a little reward for making it in ?
Lastly there is an interesting assumption that if you have to travel any distance by car or train, you may need to leave early to travel home safely. That is undoubtedly the case when you are talking about fresh snow falls. But what gets overlooked is that walking to and from work becomes far more dangerous after pavements have had the snow trampled down into sheet ice. In some cases it should be those who live locally encouraged to leave early to travel home safely!