Weather - how bad does it need to be in order to ask to wfh?

[Idontkowmyname]

As the title says at what point would you contact work and ask to work from home to save “braving the weather”. At what point would you, if any, not go into work?
Just a curiosity on my part not trying to decide what to do.

When police advice is don't travel unless necessary

Completely depends on your job and the attitude of your employer.

Obviously some jobs can't be done from home, but some employers can be funny about desk bound jobs that can be done from home but they like employees to be in the office.

My employer is a bit like this, the reason being that we do have a lot of face to face discussions, which are genuinely easier and more effective than by phone/email etc but we could probably be better at video calls than we are and we do have the facility.

However, you need to decide whether it is worth using up a bit of goodwill in this way. If your employer is not receptive to home working, is it worth it to use some goodwill this time, when a more important reason may come along in the future, risking marking you out as someone who doesn't fit in well with the way things are done (not explained that very well but hopefully you know what I mean - a bit like calling in sick when you're just a bit under the weather and you could really go in, but choose not to, then if you're really sick in the future, you have 2 sick episodes on your record instead of one).

But obviously some employers are completely on board with home working and recognise that people can get as much, if not more done at home plus there's the time saved on getting to work, safer if there's a weather risk, plus less demand on transport systems.

If I couldn’t get in or it wasn’t safe to. I commute a long way by train so if it’s truly bad, trains are cancelled. I also live rurally and in a valley, so if there is snow or ice, I can’t get up the hill to go to the station anyway as our roads are gritted. I wouldn’t miss work for a bit of wind and rain though, but I do work from home regularly anyway so it wouldn’t be an issue unless I was missing something important.

If I can physically get there then I'll be there. If there is serious risk to me, then I'd reconsider.

My employer is open to wfh if there is no need to be elsewhere. During the Beast from the East, they recommended that anyone who could not walk in stayed at home. Most staff have laptops and remote logins.

We can't WFH so it depends how bad it is really. Luckily I have a fairly short drive to work

I live 2 hours away from work and need trains. I WFH and have a flexible employer so for me it would be fine. However, I keep an eye on the trains and yesterday they were fine, and all Sunday so went for it with no issues

I would only ask to wfh if the office was not suitable (e.g. on very hot days because the aircon at work is very weak) or because there was a risk I wouldn’t not make it to work/back home (e.g. the trains were not running or severely disrupted). My employer is really reasonable about this though and we’re generally give a lot of flexibility to work from home. Last year we were told to not come into work if we felt that it would’ve better to work from home during the heatwave.

You do have to think about not only getting to work but getting home too. I made the mistake many years ago of battling my way in when it was snowing. It then got worse throughout the day and I was reliant on public transport, which then was severely delayed. So I had a long wait in the cold. I had a 20 minute walk from the station to home, fine in normal weather but by that point it was a blizzard. No taxis available. It was horrendous! So after that I would look and see the forecast for the whole day, not just look at whether I could make it in. I wouldn’t risk going through that again.