How We (Don't) Cope With Snow in Britain

It snowed in Britain yesterday. You'd have had to have been under a big rock for the past 24 hours to have missed the fact. Reporters, probably delighted to be covering something other than bankruptcies and jobless figures, revelled in every snow pun, while other countries sniggered at our inability to cope with what constitutes a normal winter's day in upstate New York. The Beeb even shamed us by showing how Muscovites cope by simply being a little prepared, while a Marketwatch forum quickly turned from the news itself to a lively debate about whether the snow was a sign of climate change.

The Federation of Small Business's estimate of the daily cost of the snow to UK Plc (£1.2bn a day) was faithfully repeated. London Chamber of Commerce worked out that one day without the London underground could cost London 48m pounds in lost productivity.

But in our enthusiasm to talk about anything but the economy, though, we may've fallen prey to some silly-season style reporting (which I'm about to repeat):

Take that Marketwatch report mentioned already. It also quoted a study by the Centre for Economic and Business Research, which warned that up to 3,000 small firms could be pushed into "premature bankruptcy" by bad weather. Already weakened companies reliant on cashflow cannot afford to have payments delayed under any circumstances, warned Douglas McWilliams, the CEBR's chief executive-- while also claiming that the impact of extreme weather events on GDP is often exaggerated.

But surely a small business would have to have a seriously precarious position if it couldn't survive a couple of days' delay in payment?

Then there was the productivity loss estimates. The FSB also claimed 20 per cent of the workforce didn't make it in yesterday, which is around 6.4 million people. This, it was estimated, could've equated to a 900 million pound loss in productivity, based on UK economic output of 4.5bn pounds. But who's to say that all of those stay-at-homes were off building snowmen and skiving?

If the biggest cost to business is lost productivity because of absent employees, the dent should be smaller now that so many more can work from home.

And a stroll down my local high street found every shop open, with the only darkened premises belonging to NatWest bank -- presumably no-one in south-west London needed a commercial loan yesterday.

Last, anyone listening to the news yesterday morning would've learned that not only was it going to be a long, unpleasant journey into work, but that it was already "National Sickie Day" anyway. August 2008 research by pensions provider Friends Provident claimed that post-Christmas blues, financial constraints and the dark weather combine on this day each year to force employees into calling it a collective 'duvet day'.

This year's heavy snowfall and the parlous state of the economy would just compound the absentee figures, it was warned, and would likely result in higher absentee levels this year overall, the report continued.

Anyone wavering about whether or not to brave the underground (which wasn't entirely down) or catch a train (and yes, there was a limited service) would've been entirely put off by that piece of news, so it had a self-fulfilling effect.

Nothing seemed half as dramatic on the ground as it did when reported. Some people made it in to work, some people didn't. Some were more productive than others. We all wondered how we managed to be (as usual) so unprepared when we knew the snow was coming. Many businesses will have lost a bit of ground, hopefuly to be regained shortly. Some may have benefited (coffee houses, ISPs, chemists, bandage-makers and pharmaceutical companies).

It's true London wasn't brilliantly prepared -- it doesn't say much for our risk management prowess. But it only happens about every two decades. And that spike in remote access use must surely indicate that this time, at least some of those stay-at-homes were working.