Policies for Getting to the Office in Inclement Weather

Understand the Inclement Weather in Your Location

Take into consideration the inclement weather in the locations where your employees are reporting to work. This is because different areas have different types of inclement weather.

For example, Florida and Texas are more prone to experiencing extreme heat and hurricanes than New York and Washington state. Six inches of snow in New York doesn’t warrant a blink, but six inches of snow in Florida would create a statewide catastrophe. Understanding what types of weather occur at your locations is the first step to creating a comprehensive inclement weather policy and ensuring that your employees stay safe.

Create Your Inclement Weather Policy

Your inclement weather policy should include the scenarios in which your business could close for the severe or unusual weather, the attendance and remote working policies, and how your employees will get paid when severe weather impacts your operations.

Include Weather Emergency Guidelines

Your emergency weather guidelines should list the most common examples of extreme weather in the area that make it unsafe to work or unsafe to get to work and how employees should handle those situations. Extreme weather can include:

• Damaging Winds
• Extreme Cold
• Extreme Heat
• Floods
• Hurricanes
• Mudslides
• Severe Thunderstorms
• Snow And Ice
• Storm Surge
• Tornadoes
• Tropical Storms
• Wildfires

Take the time to determine which severe weather threats are mainly likely to occur in your area and address each of those threats. Remember to also provide general guidelines for extreme weather that couldn’t be anticipated in advance. This includes the scenarios in which your company might close. For example, your policy might state that if the government buildings and offices or schools are closed, your business is also closed, and employees should stay home.

If you’re in an industry that must operate in extreme weather, it’s essential to address how employees will get to work and how shift changes will occur due to employees being late or completely unable to make it into the office due to road conditions.

Address Employee Safety

Make sure your emergency weather policy addresses employee safety. A good place to start is OSHA and the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). For example, Title 49 of the Federal Code of Regulations states that drivers can refuse to drive if they believe that the road conditions are too dangerous for safe travel.

Employers should also address certain safety precautions if employees must work in hazardous conditions. For example, in extreme heat, employers should take care to provide adequate rest periods with plenty of water and shade. For extreme cold, it’s important to make sure that employees have the right types of clothing that will keep them warm and dry and to provide heat sources if possible.

When it comes to your employees getting to the office, you can offer some guidelines of when it’s too dangerous to drive, but ultimately, it’s up to the employees to determine if they can handle the road conditions and if the roads are passable.

Discuss Office Attendance and Remote Working Options

If you’re like most businesses, there’s a good chance that some of your employees can perform their jobs remotely. This can include your HR personnel, IT support staff and administrative personnel. For members in departments that could feasibly work from home, make sure they have all their required login credentials and know the systems that they need to log into prior to the emergency weather.

You should also discuss what happens if your employees experience a power outage, or their homes are damaged during the severe weather. Should they attempt to get to another location that has power, water and Internet, or should they take PTO or vacation for the days they won’t be able to work? Addressing these things in your severe weather policy gives employees a standard by which to operate and a set of expectations.

Decide How You’re Going to Handle Scheduling and Payroll

Explain how your company plans to handle scheduling and payroll. You’ll also need to make sure your policy adheres to any labor laws. For example, salaried employees receive their full pay for the week, regardless of whether your business is open or closed, if the employees performed any work that week.

You may choose to not pay hourly employees, if they were unable to work for the day or unable to work their entire shifts due to having to leave early due to the inclement weather. However, some employers choose to pay their employees for a certain number of hours if they were scheduled and unable to work a full shift or make it to the business location. Other employers request that employees use PTO or vacation days for the missed hours.

Lastly, determine how you will get payroll done and how employees should report their hours in order to get paid on time and in full. If your company already uses payroll software, your employees are mostly likely already familiar with inputting your hours, and your payroll employees should have access to that software, regardless of their location, assuming the power and internet connections are working.

If your payroll software isn’t available in the cloud, you may want to consider switching to cloud-based payroll software. In the meantime, you’ll need to have a plan on how your payroll employees will get to the office or how your HR employees will get the payroll completed on time in the event of severe weather.

Distribute Your Inclement Weather Policy to Your Employees

Once you’ve created your inclement weather policy, make sure every employee gets a copy. This could mean adding the policy to your employee handbook and giving all the employees a new copy of that handbook and making sure the policy is available on your internal website. Don’t forget to include phone numbers and email addresses for your HR staff in case someone has a question.

Consider Using an HR and payroll Provider, like Exact Payroll

While it’s important to pay your employees in a timely manner all the time, it’s even more important that your employees receive their pay on time during and after a severe weather event. This is because your employees may need the money to pay for emergency supplies, leave the area for a safer location and pay for meals and other sudden expenses. To ensure that your payroll goes out on time every time, you may want to consider using a payroll provider, like Exact Payroll.

At Exact Payroll, we have human resources and payroll software solutions that can help ensure your employees are paid accurately and on time, even when the weather is bad, and you have to close your offices and locations. We can help you with benefits enrollment and tracking, PTO tracking, employee handbook development, workflow automation, payroll processing and taxes. We even have a self-service portal for employees.

To learn more about our HR and payroll services, give us a call at 866-987-9898.