| Hurricane Milton roared through Florida last night, spawning deadly tornadoes, dropping record amounts of rain, sending seawater into homes and businesses, and cutting critical power and internet lines. Beyond employees' immediate safety, it's the severed connection that concerns companies whose workers moved to the state to work remotely. Bloomberg Work Shift's Jo Constantz writes today about ways to think about climate-proofing the workforce. Plus: The math behind clothing resale, and China's space dreams. If this email was forwarded to you, click here to sign up. After back-to-back hurricanes and with more than 3 million homes and businesses now without power in Florida, it might be time for companies to start building bunkers for employees in the state. That's one idea that came up in my interview with John Bai, an associate finance professor at Northeastern University's D'Amore-McKim School of Business, as a not-entirely-far-fetched answer to the kinds of natural disasters that are devastating parts of the US with increasing—and increasingly unnerving—frequency. Last year, Bai published a study with a team of researchers that identified a key strategic capacity to make companies significantly more resilient: remote work. Bai and the team created a measure of what they called "remote work readiness" by analyzing job postings for publicly traded companies to see what share of their workforce is able to carry on out of the office. They matched this information with data on natural disasters to see whether those better prepared for remote work fared better in the aftermath, compared with less-equipped competitors. The researchers found that during the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, companies that were less prepared lost almost $100 million more in quarterly revenue—and had lower net incomes and lower stock returns—than better-prepared counterparts.  Workers in Kissimmee, Florida, shore up internet cables on Tuesday, ahead of Hurricane Milton's arrival. Photographer: Giorgio Viera/AFP/Getty Images Bai sees remote work readiness as something of an insurance policy for businesses in an age of climate change dystopia. And he doesn't mean just giving employees a laptop and hoping for the best (though having the right tech is a necessary prerequisite). "It's more of a mindset shift. It's more of an organizational and management practice shift," he says. "How do we ensure the same productivity and efficiency are still guaranteed—that's a deeper issue. And it takes a lot more than just IT capability." That shift might make sense for a pandemic and certain disasters, such as heavy snowstorms or when thick wildfire smoke keeps people indoors. What happens, though, when you have a storm like Hurricane Milton? How should executives think about remote work when employees don't have Wi-Fi, or power, or inhabitable homes? Bai sees two solutions. One: Relocate your go-to employees—those most prepared to keep operations afloat when trouble strikes—to parts of the country where natural disasters are more rare. That means moving workers away from the coasts. (Sorry, ocean lovers.) As climate change worsens, however, "safe" places are becoming increasingly hard to find. Two: Build disaster-proof bunkers. The problem with that, though, is you still might be at the mercy of public infrastructure. Even if you build an impenetrable fortress—an expensive proposition to begin with—your Wi-Fi could still cut out if a tree falls on a wire somewhere. So solution No. 1 is probably your best bet. Still, the conversation left me wondering: Are these really our only options? Follow Bloomberg News for live updates on Hurricane Milton damage and recovery. | 
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