Happy holidays, everyone!

"The season is upon us" is really just a pretty way of saying we are going to get DUMPED on with snow. Good for making snowmen and sitting by fireplaces, but not so much for clear roads or traffic flow.

Federal offices in Washington D.C. are all but sure to close down. Some of these workers will actually be teleworking during this time, so productivity may not be lost after all! News isn’t so clear on what businesses in Washington D.C. will be doing though.

I know that here in good old Minnesota we stubbornly send our employees out to treacherous roads, and almost proudly so, regardless of the weather. What’s two feet of snow in a night, eh?

By no means am I picking on our great work ethic or our fantastic snow removal services, but it doesn’t particularly make sense to send out whole workforces during blizzards or to drive on ice rinks when we have options like telework. Though ice rink driving could potentially be a pretty cool addition to the Winter Olympics… but I digress.

Weather is always that unpredictable factor on your bottom line. Why not be prepared?

Adeel Lari, M.B.A., P.E.
Director of Innovative Financing, Research Fellow, and Teleworker
Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
University of Minnesota