Much of the UK’s workforce ground to a halt at the beginning of the month in the freezing conditions that closed schools, rail links and airports. Mary Clarke offers some advice to help you plan ahead for the next forecast freeze.

The Federation of Small businesses estimated that 10% of the UK’s 30 million workforce was unable to work, which it says placed many small businesses in jeopardy. As temperatures start to plummet again this week and with the cold snap predicted to last until Christmas, companies should be putting in place contingency plans to ensure business as usual. Douglas McWilliams, chief executive of The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) estimated the overall cost of this business downtime was around £1bn every day. He also claimed it had threatened many industry sectors, in particular construction where projects were being put on hold until next year and in retail which should be experiencing its busiest time of the year. 

In most companies, remote access computing, the use of Skype, conference calls, email and instant messaging means that a large number of employees can work effectively from anywhere in the UK. But the truth is that in most business there are certain job roles that need to be covered by people on site and some businesses such as call centre workers, aviation and medicine to name but a few that are wholly reliant on people being able to get to work.

One simple and effective way of planning which employees are needed to ensure business continuity is by conducting regular employee assessments.  Employee assessments provide managers with detailed information about the skills, knowledge and confidence of staff on an individual level. This insight enables them to map skills across an organisation, determine the skills needed to ensure business continuity and to identify employees with transferable skills that could be successfully reapplied in other areas of the company. It also enables them to assess the skills, competence and confidence of third party resources in advance of these difficult conditions. Indeed, reciprocal resourcing arrangements can be contracted beforehand.
Managers can get a holistic view of its entire workforce and as such make accurate decisions about how employees could be best utilised, should workers need to be rearranged amongst departments.  Understanding employees’ transferable skills, makes job redistribution quicker and easier, reducing business downtime and ensuring that a level of business performance is maintained.  

In addition, assessments highlight skills shortages and pinpoint individual training needs. This information can be vital too when contingency planning as it can ensure that managers don’t make mistakes and redeploy people in jobs they wouldn’t be able to handle because they lack the necessary skills or knowledge.  So this information helps mitigate against business risk and reduces the likelihood of employee mistakes which could be costly. And, as part of the planning process, managers can ensure that appropriate and relevant training is given to individuals who need it so they can improve their skills and performance.

Assessment programmes that measure employee confidence levels in conjunction with their skills and knowledge are particularly useful. Such tests enable managers to see who has the capability and the confidence to take on more responsibility and also those individuals who could potentially train their colleagues in new areas, something which could prove invaluable in ensuring business continuity.

Part of a company’s contingency planning would be to trigger the need for pre-screened skilled part time or temporary help if absentee figures dropped to a certain level.  By having a pre-screening programme in place, managers can develop an internal standard for successful and productive employees as well as third party resources.  Once this standard is established, new recruits can be assessed and measured against it.  In this way, managers know in advance if temporary staff have the appropriate skills and if they are well-suited for a given position.  This extra insight into the knowledge and confidence of all resources can help managers avoid wasting money and time on ill-suited temporary or permanent employees. 

So with freezing temperatures predicted to continue until Christmas and more winter months looming, it would be a good idea for businesses to better understand the skills and expertise within their workforce so they can plan ahead for snow, ice or any emergency and ensure they will be ‘open for business’ as usual.

Mary Clarke, CEO, Cognisco