Braving the rain on the way to work is a common sight for Filipinos during the typhoon season. However, with continuing environmental issues like climate change, the Philippines, especially Metro Manila, have been experiencing intense rains and flooding in recent years. Contrary to the usual quip, Filipinos aren’t waterproof.
As a business owner, the safety of your employees is key to maintaining operations. In times of typhoons or other natural calamities, ensuring that the team is out of harm’s way of work hazards reinforces your commitment to the workforce and makes your team feel valued.
According to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAG-ASA), the country’s area of responsibility experiences an average of 20 tropical cyclones per year, with about 8 to 9 crossing the Philippines. The country experiences rain throughout the year, but the months of July through October are when nearly 70% of all typhoons develop. With this forecast, how can you keep your employees safe during severe rains? Here are some rainy-day workplace safety tips to consider.
Key Takeaway:
• Maintain open lines through work emails and messaging platforms and provide mobile data allowances to ensure continuous communication during severe weather.
• If employees are at the office during a typhoon, consider allowing them to stay until conditions improve. Regularly conduct drills to familiarize staff with evacuation protocols.
• Frequent saving of work is crucial to prevent data loss due to potential power outages caused by heavy rains and strong winds.
• Recognize that natural disasters can disrupt operations. Be prepared to modify deadlines and inform clients of possible delays.
• Keep abreast of weather updates and communicate with employees about their ability to work. Managers should avoid pressuring staff to travel in unsafe conditions.
• Check on the well-being of staff impacted by the typhoon and help such as essential supplies, if needed.
How to Prepare your Workplace during Typhoon
Have an emergency plan in place
They say if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail, so it’s always best to map out a plan during the typhoon season. When a storm is expected, assess the working conditions of your team and hand out typhoon safety tips. Ask them the following questions:
- Is your area flood-prone?
- Will you be able to travel or work in the office or vice versa to your home?
- Will you need assistance during the typhoon, such as working from home during the typhoon?
These will give you an idea if you need to prepare food or sleeping arrangements for employees who cannot get home during a typhoon and cannot make it to the office. This will also allow you to adjust work arrangements easily.
Set a communication plan
Keep everyone updated with the news and set up a communication plan via work email and a messaging platform in case other members lose access to electricity or the internet. Provide mobile data and load allowance when needed to keep communication lines open amid intense weather situations.
Coordinate with staff
If your team is at the office during the typhoon onslaught, it’s better to let them stay at the office until the weather situation subsides. Chances are, they will find it hard to drive or commute back homes, so prepare safety tips.
Discuss with the team members the protocols if they need to evacuate the building. These periodic drills and exercises should be practiced from time to time to train employees about safety measures during strong weather and other natural calamities.
How to Manage Work during Typhoon
Back up work
Heavy rains usually bring extreme winds, flooding, and even storm surges. These tend to interrupt the electricity supply, so make ‘ctrl + s’ a habit and save your work from time to time. If you are dealing with clients, re-schedule face-to-face meetings or interviews as necessary for your safety and theirs.
Adjust workload accordingly
Natural calamities are no one’s fault, and some businesses are bound to be affected by the calamity one way or another. As a business owner, it’s essential to be flexible and adapt to the situation. Adjust deadlines accordingly to cater to members affected by the typhoon and inform clients of potential delays in delivery in case it’s unavoidable. Alternatively, you can have your team fast-track some of the work ahead of the storm to not meddle with the workflow.
How to Deal with Typhoon Aftermath
Continue to watch the news
Keep updated with the latest weather forecast to know the latest on the situation and continue delivering typhoon preparedness tips to your team. For employees, inform your managers if you can make it to work or if you can’t work due to storm-related issues. For managers, don’t let employees risk their safety to travel to work. Delegate workloads to other members should it be deemed necessary.
Offer assistance to affected staff
If your staff is affected by the calamity, check up on their safety, health, and well-being. If they have children or elderly at their homes, they have to assist and take some work off their burden if possible. You can also donate some essential grocery items to them if they don’t have access to them due to flooding.
Preventive Tips for Flood Prone Areas
Suppose you have a fully remote team, and some or most of them are affected by a typhoon, you can opt to rent a coworking space located in a higher building in the meantime, so they can work without having to worry about potential hazards in their area.
If you are within Metro Manila, check out M Spaces. Located in the heart of the National Capital Region, M Spaces offers fully-serviced offices, meeting rooms, and coworking spaces at the East Tower of the PSE Center in Ortigas. M Spaces has an office that can cater to freelancers, digital nomads, small teams, or outsourced divisions of larger corporations.
You don’t have to worry about accessibility within Ortigas since it’s near the MRT station, bus, and jeep terminals. P2P hubs are also easily accessible, and ride-hailing services and taxis are available no matter what time of the day. Employees also don’t have to worry about food options since the area is bustling with plenty of restaurants, fast food centers, and even eateries for their lutong bahay cravings.
M Spaces’ private offices make for a conducive and cost-effective workplace option whether you are a freelancer, entrepreneur, startup, or small business owner. Its private offices are equipped with high-speed Wi-fi and LAN connection, overhead shelves for additional space, free use of office utilities like printers, scanners, and photocopying machines, and 12-hour access to a meeting room where your team can discuss goals and projects.
M Spaces’ private office space tenants also help themselves with unlimited coffee in the pantry. All of that for as low as Php7,000 per seat and on flexible leasing terms so you can enjoy the plug-and-play workplace without worrying about lock-in periods.
In need of other business solutions? M Spaces is your one-stop shop since they offer business solutions such as business registration, corporate compliance, bookkeeping, secretarial services, and more.
Looking for office space to rent in Manila? Visit M Spaces to learn more about rates, services, and ongoing promos. You can pop in our inbox at info@mspacesph.com or check us on Facebook and Instagram to see photos of our office and meeting rooms.
