View Full Version : 2 blizzards should be incentive to move HQ downtown



Easy180
02-02-2011, 12:16 PM
How great for companies to be able to put up personnel at hotels within walking distance...Hope my employer listens up as my employer had to really scramble to get bodies in for the daily critical tasks

Just sayin

adaniel
02-02-2011, 12:23 PM
I would hope that there are other reasons to move downtown but yes this should be one of them. I would would just file that under the "downtown is awesomley convenient" category.

Now you want a reason to LIVE downtown? If your job is down there and your car is blocked in by a 4 foot snow drift you can WALK to work, as I will be doing tomorrow!!

When my eyebrows start to freeze in the morning, I will just imagine that I'm walking through the rugged Alpine brush of Colorado. Take that suburbanites! :kicking::kicking:

BBatesokc
02-02-2011, 12:27 PM
The company my wife works HR for has a headquarters in downtown OKC and one in Houston. When the employees in Houston were victims of the hurricane they were moved to the OKC HQ and housed in several of the area downtown hotels for awhile.

PennyQuilts
02-02-2011, 01:05 PM
Most employees faced with a blizzard would prefer to stay home and clean up driveways, broken pipes and kids cut loose from school the next day.

Easy180
02-02-2011, 01:11 PM
Most employees faced with a blizzard would prefer to stay home and clean up driveways, broken pipes and kids cut loose from school the next day.

And those wouldn't be put up in hotels...Take the single and parents with grown children put them up and let em run the show for a few days

MadMonk
02-02-2011, 02:08 PM
Better yet, if possible, invest in technology that allows your workers to work remotely from home.

TulsaRobert
02-02-2011, 02:24 PM
Better yet, if possible, invest in technology that allows your workers to work remotely from home.

I am working from home, but there are drawbacks to this as well. For example, since I do software development, I need to be ble to deploy applications remotely. This can easily be accomplished through remote desktop, but if the device becomes disconnected (either through software fault or because of restart), I can't do anything. Therefore, I had to drive up to work (thankfully, our company relocated to downtown Tulsa and I live only a couple of miles away) to re-connect it and then drive all the way back home. Remoting into work is great and works a lot of the time, but it is still not a silver-bullet.

Snowman
02-02-2011, 05:28 PM
Better yet, if possible, invest in technology that allows your workers to work remotely from home.

My company already has VPN to get into either our local office or corporate networks, it is practically like working at the computer if only a few people are using it, however the local office system does not have the resources for how slamed it gets when over one or two hundred people try to use it like the last two days.

OKCisOK4me
02-02-2011, 06:30 PM
Thank God for The Underground!

MadMonk
02-02-2011, 06:54 PM
I am working from home, but there are drawbacks to this as well. For example, since I do software development, I need to be ble to deploy applications remotely. This can easily be accomplished through remote desktop, but if the device becomes disconnected (either through software fault or because of restart), I can't do anything. Therefore, I had to drive up to work (thankfully, our company relocated to downtown Tulsa and I live only a couple of miles away) to re-connect it and then drive all the way back home. Remoting into work is great and works a lot of the time, but it is still not a silver-bullet.

With most newer, mainstream server hardware, you have out-of-band connectivity that can be set up and you can still get to the machine - even if it's crashed. About the only thing you can't do is replace a piece of faulty hardware and that happens rarely enough these days to be only a minor annoyance. Workstations are a different story though. I worked out of my home for a solid year a couple years ago and connectivity was never an issue. However, not being face-to-face with the people you work with does have it's drawbacks - even with instant messaging, webex meetings, etc. I still missed the personal interactions with coworkers. I spoke with my boss weekly and but only saw him two times (he lived out of state.) That wasn't a bad thing as I don't prefer to be micromanaged, but it did take some getting used to. However the occasional, or even weekly schedule of working from home is a great thing, IMO. I've been working from home all week and aside from having the kids distracting me from time to time, it's been great.

TulsaRobert
02-03-2011, 05:56 AM
However, not being face-to-face with the people you work with does have it's drawbacks - even with instant messaging, webex meetings, etc. I still missed the personal interactions with coworkers. I spoke with my boss weekly and but only saw him two times (he lived out of state.) That wasn't a bad thing as I don't prefer to be micromanaged, but it did take some getting used to. However the occasional, or even weekly schedule of working from home is a great thing, IMO. I've been working from home all week and aside from having the kids distracting me from time to time, it's been great.

I know exactly what you are saying. I woke up extra early today so that I could make it into the office in hopes that others will make it in as well. I miss talking to people, and I think I was starting to scare my dog with how much I was talking to her. ;-)

Roadhawg
02-03-2011, 06:43 AM
We have VPN but since I live 5 minutes from work and have a 4X4 I still came in to the office. If we lost power it's my job to fire up the generator outside and switch everything over.

Platemaker
02-03-2011, 08:31 AM
Work at a hotel for over a decade and then tell me if you remember what holidays, weekends, or even snow-days are... sigh.:(

OKCisOK4me
02-03-2011, 08:37 AM
Work at a hotel for over a decade and then tell me if you remember what holidays, weekends, or even snow-days are... sigh.:(

Same can be said for my industry--RETAIL!

Larry OKC
02-05-2011, 07:33 AM
2 blizzards should be incentive to move HQ downtown....or next to any of the numerous motels across the Metro...number of them along the Merdian corridor, NW Expressway, Memorial

Easy180
02-05-2011, 07:48 AM
2 blizzards should be incentive to move HQ downtown....or next to any of the numerous motels across the Metro...number of them along the Merdian corridor, NW Expressway, Memorial

Not quite as good as my employer tried that and they could not get out of the parking lot

Of course it would not be a major factor but it is yet another advantage of being downtown

Larry OKC
02-09-2011, 02:13 AM
How does being downtown help the not able to get out of the parking lot? If you are within walking distance, you are within walking distance no matter where you are at, right?

Easy180
02-09-2011, 05:18 AM
Walking distance and blizzard just don't belong together

Larry OKC
02-10-2011, 01:51 AM
Easy180, I agree, so how does that make DT better?

Spartan
02-10-2011, 03:03 AM
I think there is a real argument hidden somewhere in here, that hasn't been brought up. A blizzard and walking distance is a non-starter for most, although yes it may be practical. Obviously Calgary has its fair share of blizzards, and one advantage they have is a concentration of people in the center where they can give extra attention to plowing roads. Same goes for cities in Northern Europe, where I am now. These places have a reasonable expectation, even right after a blizzard, for roads (and in most cases sidewalks) to be passable.

In OKC obviously there is no reasonable expectation because of how severely taxed the city services are by the immense sprawl. The hundreds of square miles that make up the city, and thousands of square miles that make up the metro--and at this point, downtown has no greater population density than anywhere else. So for a practical solution to adverse conditions, downtown would be a great place to start to build up density to raise the bar on the reality of what city services can hope to accomplish.

Easy180
02-10-2011, 04:10 AM
Easy180, I agree, so how does that make DT better?

Conncourse comes to mind

Larry OKC
02-12-2011, 01:45 AM
Ok, so now you have to have a hotel, office and access to the Conncourse (and this only helps if the Conncourse is directly connected to the hotel and office)?

Spartan, point taken. Now, how do you propose we get everyone to relocate downtown and what time frame are you talking about? In response to the start of the thread, how does it benefit a business today or in the very near future (say, within a year) to relocate now?