The influence of Typhoon

Landing at 3:20am yesterday in Xiangshan County of neighboring Zhejiang Province, Haikui, the 11th typhoon this year, brought strong gales and heavy downpours to my home town Shanghai, China. No ships had been allowed in or out of Shanghai's ports, the world's busiest by container volume, since Tuesday night. Nearly a third of the city suffered torrential rain with precipitation over 100 millimeters. The worst area suffered the most with 194 millimeters.


Since all students are still having their summer vacation, all outdoor activities are canceled on Wednesday. All metro links change their operation time due to the effect of bad weather condition. "Do we need to go for work?" is the big question among working classes. All government owned companies desided to give at least Wednesday off for all their employees. However, multinational companies in Shanghai were allowed to make their own decisions. According to my friends' experiences and information I collected, let's see the differences:
1.   Diageo             UK              Human Resources Department sent email, one dayoff for everyone
2.   Autodesk         US               Informed dayoff one day before as well as sending email to follow up make sure all employees are safe.
3.   Microsoft Services   US      Work at home or company pays transporation (taxi) fee if employee has to work in the office
4.   SAPA             Sweden        Half-day off
5.   Decathlon       Frence          All deparment heads make decision. Most of people did not come to office.
6.   LVMH            Frence          Did not get any notice the day before. However, nobody came to work in one department. Finally, informed afternoon half day off.
7.   Volkswagen   Germany       Everybody needs to be on duty. All managers come to follow up.
8.   OMEGA        Switzerland   Email all to come to work, but nobody need work overtime.
9.   Sony              Japan             Employees can choose work at home or  one dayoff
10. Puli                Taiwan          Foced stuff to take one dayoff, but it is not for free. Everyone has to change it with 1 day annual leave.

We can get some clue about the company culture through this case. The country backgroud of the company also influents the decision making.


Typhoon will be around until this weekend. Hope everybody in Shanghai could safely pass this period. 

The word for today:
 Tai Feng
 台  风
 Typhoon