Hot desk or dedicated desk: which suits you
How often you come in, what you leave behind and how you take calls decide it.
Working through cyclone season in Bhubaneswar
October and November bring storms to the coast. How we prepare, when we close and how members keep working.
Odisha’s coast sees cyclones most years, usually in May or between October and December. Bhubaneswar, about 60 km from the sea, often gets heavy rain and strong winds even when a storm makes landfall elsewhere. Over the years we have settled on a routine.
When the weather department warns of a cyclone heading towards Odisha, usually three or four days ahead, we post an update in the members’ group. We fill the generator’s fuel tank to full, check the UPS batteries, bring in the plants and chairs from the terrace and tape the large windows on the exposed side. Members are told which days we expect to stay open and which we may close.
We follow the state government’s advice. If offices are asked to close, we close too, and we do not expect anyone to travel in a storm. Members with 24 × 7 access are asked not to come in during the worst hours, even if they can. Once the wind drops, Bikash and Priyanka check the building, and we usually reopen within a day, often before power returns to many homes in the city. That is when our generator and backup internet matter most, and the hall can get busy, so we extend open-desk seating to the meeting rooms.
We suggest every member keeps a laptop charger, a power bank and any documents they need on their own laptop in the run-up to a storm, not just in the cloud. Monthly members are not charged extra or refunded for closure days, which are rare and usually only one or two a year.
