http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/all/991108CAF6

Staying Till the End

Many Y2K teams actually WANT to be at work when the millennium arrives

By Kathleen Melymuka 11/08/99 The place to be this New Year's Eve? Work.

Nobody would have predicted it last year, but many people who have given their all to their corporate Y2K effort really want to see how it comes out.

"A number of people have said to me, 'You can't keep me away. I'm going to be there,'" laughs Catherine Gross, CIO at Magellan Behavioral Health in Columbia, Md. "People are less concerned than they were last spring. Things have calmed down, even domestically."

As a result, Gross, who last year was worried that competing family priorities might keep key people from showing up over the date-change weekend, is now confident. "They're committed, and getting commitment is about as much as you can do  that and being flexible about anything that does come up," she says. For example, Gross has told her people that if all else fails and they can't line up child care for the weekend, they can bring their children in to work.

Most companies aren't very concerned about on-site employee complications as they near the year's end. Earlier in the year, for example, Y2K project manager Irene Dec was thinking about providing day care and even pet care to assure that the Y2K team at Prudential Insurance Company of America in Newark, N.J., would feel comfortable about showing up. But as confidence rises, getting people to show up seems less likely to be a problem. "To be at a Prudential site at New Year's Eve is something people want to do now," Dec says. "I get people asking to come."

Eat, Drink and Be Y2K Compliant

But there are still logistics to consider when more than 600 employees globally will be on-site for New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. For example, food will be plentiful  from a special New Year's Eve dinner and alcohol-free celebration to breakfast in the morning. Hotel rooms have been booked for months, and cots will be available for on-site catnaps. If people are unable to drive in or there are problems with public transit, extra cars and drivers will be standing by to pick up and deliver employees. There are three levels of on-call employees; so that if a person still can't make it in, there will be two backups. "We're taking extra steps to bring comfort to the folks here, give them a place to rest and food for them to enjoy so they can be here and still have a positive experience," Dec says.

Other companies have taken extra steps when employees indicated they were needed. For example, Charles Schwab & Co. employees raised concerns about child care, saying their regular providers might not be available because of both the holiday and the extended hours. As a result, the San Francisco-based brokerage is working with DCC Inc., a work/life benefits firm in Westport, Conn., to set up a prescreened child-care provider network in 10 areas around the country for use by Schwab employees involved in Y2K-related activities. Employees who don't live near the 10 locations will get individual referrals. Schwab will pay more money to personnel required to be on-site or on call over the holiday weekend and will also reimburse employees a set per-hour amount for Y2K-related child care. "We're not sure yet how much usage there will be," says Walter Gendell, vice president of benefits development, "but it's the right thing to do."

But such Y2K extras seem to be the exception. At Alliant Energy in Madison, Wis., Pam Wegner, executive vice president of corporate services, thought a lot about New Year's Eve earlier this year when she suspected employees might face disruptions in community services. But increasing confidence in community readiness has changed her thinking. Alliant will have a significant number of people working over the holiday weekend, but Wegner says the company doesn't plan to offer many special perks or services.

Still, Wegner says she's sensitive to the burden this puts on employees. "We really went through the list to make sure we were having people working only where we absolutely had to have them work," she says. "We don't want to make people work in the middle of the night just because it's a neat thing to do."

The New Year's Eve cadre will include all senior management up to the CEO. "We are leading by example," she says, "not saying, 'You guys should work, and we'll have a party.'"

Alliant psyched up its Y2K team with a series of drills in which they walked through everything they will need to do over the date-change weekend. "When you put people in a drill situation, they see what this is all about and why their participation is absolutely vital," she says. "A tremendous team spirit has been developing over these drills."

Wegner's prediction for New Year's Eve: "There's a lot of camaraderie. There will be lots of good cheer. We're going to be feeding people so well that some folks are saying the worst Y2K problem will be stomachaches."

-- Ken Decker (kcdecker@worldnet.att.net), November 09, 1999

Answers

Exactly what we need - some drunken programmer spilling champagne on a RAID or a CPU (could blame problems on Y2K). I am subscribed to CW and I believe that this article is a pure PR. Why don't they go and interview people who will be working during the rollover. My friend works for Chase Manhattan Bank and will be spending New Year night at work. I did not hear happiness in his voice when we were discussing it.

-- Brooklyn (MSIS@cyberdude.com), November 09, 1999.

In the last year or so since CW was bought, it has become a farce. It's editorials are so pro-advertiser, so anti-grunt employee or contractor, it is actually funny. The only good thing about it, it's now 'free to qualified subscribers.'

Take this self serving plate of tripe. The bosses are bragging that the employees are lining up and begging to have a shot at working over the holiday weekend. Sort of like the plantation owner bragging about the loyalty of his merry darkies, how happy they are in the fields, singing all day long.

-- stevie c (scwarner@lambsen.com), November 09, 1999.

Well some people might want to be at work on New Years Eve but I don't. Of course I have been told by my superiors that I will be.

So on New Years Eve I am hoping that nothing much happens as I really doubt that a 24 hour a day seven day a week business is going to wait while we attempt to fix something fouled up. Some of the equipment that we use to control processes will probably work ok but the managers may not know how much product was produced and who it was produced for. Small problems could be fixed but I don't think many large ones will be. Takes time to fix large problems and tired people don't work very fast. My company only has a few people qualified to work on some of our Servers (DB, Web, etc.) and those folks can get stretched pretty thin. We have done as much as we can to prepare but like everyone else we are hoping that our vendors are right when they claimed they are ready.

Give you a real good answer about that next year.

wally wallman

-- wally wallman (wally_yllaw@hotmail.com), November 09, 1999.