Dealing with Extreme Weather: An Inconvenient Truce
February 21, 2008
Today we’ve released the results of our most recent survey concerning the impact on the workplace of extreme weather. In Boston, we’ve had several severe workday snowstorms this year that ground the region to a halt. The picture here is from our storm on December 13th - when just about everyone’s commute became a nightmare. My one hour commute stretched to three, and I seriously considered abandoning the Mini Cooper in a snowbank. I was relatively fortunate to have a back road alternative. Other friends and colleagues spent up to six or seven hours getting home. Across the country, similar snow, wind and/or rain conditions have made this winter especially brutal.In our survey of 2810 working adults, 33% of respondents indicated that their commutes had been impacted by severe weather in the last 3 months. Once at work, employees note they are distracted from their jobs by concerns about how their commute will be impacted when they do leave, how they’ll provide alternative childcare or pick up arrangements, when or if their employers will decide to close early, etc. Employers, in turn, grapple with assessing the true severity of expected storms and determining the best course to ensure the safety of their employees while minimizing the adverse impact of closing or cutting back on staff. Read more
Super Bowl Sick Days
February 1, 2008
We’ve just published the results of a survey we did this week of 1430 full time adult workers regarding the likelihood that the Super Bowl will impact their attendance at work on Monday. According to our survey, 3% or about 1.5 million workers are likely to call in sick while another 4.4 million are likely to arrive late after having celebrated the big game.
Super Bowl-related absences could be particularly striking for organizations with a high population of Gen X and Gen Y employees, as the majority of the employed adults who say they may call in sick the day after the Super Bowl are males and females between the ages of 18-34 years (4 percent and 3 percent, respectively). Does that mean that the boomers are more responsible, or just that they can’t stay awake long enough on a “school night” to impact their ability to go to work the next day?
According to the Wall Steet Journal today, “U.S. employment unexpectedly tumbled last month for the first time in more than four years, fueling worries that the U.S. economy, which already limped into 2008, might soften further or even slip into recession in coming months. Nonfarm payrolls fell 17,000 in January, the Labor Department said Friday, the first drop since August 2003, when payrolls slid 42,000.” Super Bowl or not, those workers thinking about blowing off Monday might want to think twice about the message they could be sending to employers who may be managing to tighter workforce budgets.
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