£1 billion and counting – sustainable communications in the snow by Aimee Postle

Business groups like the Federation of Small Businesses and the Forum of Private Business have warned that the economic cost of absenteeism this week because of the snow could reach £2 billion. It was estimated that 10% of the 30-million strong workforce couldn’t get in to work yesterday and the figure is a lot higher today.

Now, we have to confess that we all took one look at the ice and snow, remembered that the Council don’t seem to grit the Jewellery Quarter to any great degree, and were grateful to have the remote IT access to be able to work from home – thanks to client teleconferences on the mobile and email communication.

So, who have been the communications winners and losers in the poor weather?

Well, BBC Breakfast today featured a caller who’d been stranded in his car all night in the south-east who was praising the local radio stations for travel and weather updates every 15 minutes.

The Met Office was apparently struggling because people failed to get into work in the snow!

Someone commented on the radio this afternoon that they had phoned their online banking service to be told there would be delays in answering their call due to the snow – at least you know the call centre is based in the UK!

Our top communications tips for these situations – be available. You don’t have to be on site – what good is a broken neck?! – but make sure that calls are being taken or redirected, that you can access your emails from home and that you have the contact details of all the people you may need to reach.

And, don’t get too stressed. If you can’t access the right document then there is always something else you can be doing and (almost) nothing in business is a matter of life or death.

Enjoy the snow and play safely!

What would stop German people going to work? by Kristina Kanne

Kristina Kanne’s guest blog

After my first night in Birmingham I opened the curtains in the morning and everythink I saw was white.  It was wondeful and it looked magical.  So I decided to leave the house 10 minutes earlier because I would need to drive slower. 

Than I put on the radio and I heart the news: “It’s a nightmare”… I thought: Oh my god something terrible must have happened in the night,but I couldn’t imagine what it could be. It took me another minute to realise that they really meant the snow.

My first thought was that is has to a joke. Five minutes later Angela called me and asked if I could make it to the office. -So they really were serious. – How ridiculous!Why shouldn’t I make it to the office? It’s just snow.

So I drove to the office and the snow turned out perfect for me: Usually it takes me about 20 minutes from my house to the office because there is a lot of traffic in the morning. In the last days it only took my 10 minutes because there was nobody on the streets and the streets were perfectly fine.

I think for the most people the snow was just a great excuse to have a day off. And I was thinking: What would German people stop going to work? I couldn’t think of anything besides serious illnesses.

Two years ago there fell a lot of snow in one region in Germany. Usually they don’t have so much snow in this are. So nobody was prepared and it was a nightmare. In some houses they have had no electricity for almost a week- but they still went to work…

So I would suggest: Put on the snow tires and drive to work!