Snow days used to be such a simple concept. You woke up to snow. You turned on the radio and waited for the news guy to make it through the list of schools and organizations. If you weren’t on the list, you scrambled to catch the bus or dig the car out. There was never any ambiguity. If you happened to miss your town on the radio, you either waited or turned on the TV. And if you were an hour or two late from shoveling, most people would understand.
Covid and working remotely changed all that. If you are fully flexible, you can choose to pay attention to the snow or not. If you are hybrid, chances are you have to check the rules. Are you supposed to be working in the office or not on that particular day? Can you switch your days in the office? Do your days matter on a snow day? If you can’t work from home, do you get the day off, or do you have to take the day off? If you are scheduled to be in the office, but can work remote, do you work or not? So many questions.
Depending on what your answers are to those questions will determine what you do on any given snow day. Having seen clients getting a myriad of instructions, some people were confused. If that wasn’t confusing enough, the rules for your coworkers may be different. I had one meeting where people showed up, even though they were technically off, because others on the call were not off. It was unnecessarily confusing. Most people figured it out, but more than a few still weren’t clear on what they were supposed to do. Note – we have been doing this for a few years now. And yet the confusion persists.
This is one of the many legacies of half-baked hybrid work practices. It’s a reminder that if policies don’t work for everyone, wherever they might be, there are going to be challenges. If you are still struggling with hybrid, it’s time to relook at your policies.
