Written by Victoria Salinas, Climate Leader in Residence at Duke University, and David Leathers, Director of Climate and Extreme Weather at the Health Action Alliance
Editor’s note: This article is adapted from a version first published by Training Industry for learning and development leaders in February 2026.
As summer begins, organizations are preparing for familiar seasonal shifts: vacations, modified schedules, summer programs, outdoor work, travel, events and changes in demand. But summer is also becoming a season of growing disruption — extreme heat, poor air quality, severe storms, flooding, grid strain and other climate-related stresses that directly affect people’s health, safety and ability to work.
This second article in the Summer Ready series focuses on a specific blind spot: extreme weather is becoming a workforce risk, but many organizations still treat it as a facilities, safety or emergency-response issue. The result is a gap between what executives increasingly recognize as a strategic risk and what managers, human resources teams, safety leaders, benefits teams and workers are equipped to handle day to day.
Having led large organizations and partnered closely with teams responsible for people, safety, operations and workforce development, we have seen firsthand the difference strong organizational readiness makes. The most effective leaders are risk managers at heart. They anticipate skills gaps, navigate disruption, strengthen leadership pipelines and prepare people for what’s next.
But there is another category of workforce risk gaining traction at the executive level — one that directly affects workforce capability — yet too often remains outside core planning conversations.
Senior executives increasingly rank extreme weather and environmental volatility among the top risks to business performance over the next decade. In a 2024 study of 300 senior executives, 81% reported that climate planning and preparedness were important to protect their business operations, with one-third saying it was very important. Yet inside many organizations, the teams responsible for training, workforce health, safety, benefits and operations often rate these same risks as low or not urgent at all.
That disconnect is one of the most striking findings in the National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health report, “The Increasing Risks to Our People-Powered Economy.”
At an enterprise level, leaders acknowledge that disruptions tied to heat, poor air quality and storms are becoming more frequent and costly. At the functional level, however, these same pressures are often treated as isolated incidents: a safety issue here, an absenteeism spike there, a productivity dip explained by “external factors.”
Rarely are these disruptions examined as part of a coherent workforce risk profile. And even more rarely are they integrated into workforce planning, manager training, benefits strategy, operations planning or long-term capability-building efforts.
The result is a blind spot — one that directly affects an organization’s ability to protect people, sustain performance and maintain continuity.
The Blind Spot
In interviews with executives and workforce leaders across industries, the National Commission on Climate and Workforce Health reveals a consistent pattern: concern at the top, uncertainty in the middle and growing anxiety among workers.
According to a 2025 survey conducted by the Commission in partnership with Northwind Climate, nearly three-quarters of workers — 73% — had personally experienced the effects of extreme weather at their workplace over the past year. Yet recent polling with the HR Certification Institute shows that while 50% of HR leaders believe extreme weather is at least somewhat of a concern, many say they lack the tools, data and budget to assess and prioritize these risks.
For organizational leaders, this is more than a safety issue. It is a workforce continuity and capability issue.
Today’s economy is fundamentally people-powered. The majority of enterprise value now resides in skills, knowledge, relationships and productivity, not only physical assets. When the workforce is disrupted by unsafe conditions, strained infrastructure or repeated interruptions, the impact shows up in health care costs, absenteeism, retention, performance, service continuity, training delivery and long-term capability building.
Yet many organizations still plan as if these disruptions are rare, temporary or outside their control. That mindset can mean uneven access to work, inconsistent training and service delivery, widening skills gaps across locations and roles, and preventable strain on managers and employees.
These risks are not evenly distributed. They vary by geography, job type and community, creating new challenges for workforce equity, engagement and long-term talent strategy.
Consider Costa Farms, one of North America’s largest plant growers. When Hurricane Helene struck Asheville, North Carolina, in late 2024, the company’s Carolinas facilities suffered significant damage — a location they had never considered high-risk for hurricanes. Meanwhile, their Florida operations were untouched. It was a reminder that climate risk can be unpredictable, and the organizations best positioned to respond and support their workers are those that have already built cross-functional readiness into their operations.
Why Workforce Risk Falls Through the Cracks
So, if senior executives see volatility as a top business risk, why hasn’t workforce planning caught up?
Part of the problem is that extreme weather does not fit neatly into one department. Heat may show up as a safety issue, a benefits issue, an absenteeism issue, a facilities issue, a productivity issue or a manager-training issue. Poor air quality may affect outdoor workers, delivery teams, school staff, health care workers or employees commuting through smoke-affected areas. Flooding may disrupt a facility, but it may also disrupt child care, transportation, housing stability and the ability of employees to return to work.
Because the impacts are distributed across functions, no single team may see the full picture.
That fragmentation creates risk. Human resources may see increased leave requests. Safety teams may see incident reports. Operations teams may see delayed shifts or lower productivity. Benefits teams may see rising health claims. Managers may see fatigue, stress or disengagement. But unless those signals are connected, organizations may miss the broader pattern: extreme weather is already affecting workforce capacity.
This is why summer readiness cannot sit only in emergency management or facilities planning. It has to be connected to people strategy.
The Role of Organizational Leaders
Preparing people for the future may no longer be only about digital skills, leadership development, recruitment or reskilling. It also requires planning for resilience — building the knowledge, adaptability and organizational muscle needed to maintain health, safety and performance under increasingly extreme conditions.
The Health Action Alliance recommends several steps organizations can take as part of its new Extreme Weather + Work program.
Train managers and supervisors to lead through disruption
Front-line leaders are often the first to make real-time decisions during extreme weather — adjusting schedules, relocating work, modifying outdoor activities, communicating with employees or triaging safety concerns with little formal preparation.
Organizations can close that gap by integrating scenario-based learning and decision-making frameworks into manager training, leadership development and continuity planning. Managers should not have to improvise every time heat, smoke, flooding or power disruption affects their teams.
Build extreme heat and weather literacy into the organization
Most people lack a basic understanding of how heat, air quality and extreme weather affect health, cognition, productivity and safety — or when and how these risks show up.
Organizations can embed this literacy into onboarding, safety training, benefits communication, employee wellness efforts, summer programming and professional development. Heat and extreme weather awareness should not be reserved only for emergency managers or safety officers. It should be part of how organizations prepare people for the conditions they are increasingly likely to face.
Support cross-functional coordination
Workforce resilience does not sit in one department. It cuts across human resources, safety, operations, benefits, facilities, communications, legal, finance and community engagement.
Organizations can build shared learning experiences and planning processes that bring these functions together before disruptions occur. The goal is to create common language, clear decision pathways and coordinated response capabilities — so that teams are not trying to build relationships and clarify roles in the middle of a crisis.
Make workforce risk visible in planning
Extreme weather affects productivity, health costs, retention, absenteeism, service delivery and customer continuity. But these impacts are often scattered across departments and rarely brought together into a single view.
Organizations should begin asking:
Which workers are most exposed? Which sites face rising heat, smoke, flood or storm risk? Which roles are hardest to shift or protect? Which communities face the greatest barriers to recovery? How do these risks affect operations, benefits, training and long-term workforce strategy?
Making these risks visible is the first step toward managing them.
Summer Readiness Starts With Workforce Readiness
If organizations are responsible for building future capability, they cannot afford to overlook the conditions in which that capability exists.
Extreme weather is no longer only an environmental issue. It is a people issue, a health issue, a continuity issue and a leadership issue. The organizations that thrive through what’s coming will be the ones that start preparing now — by helping their people understand risk, make better decisions under pressure and coordinate across functions when conditions change.
As summer begins, the message is simple: readiness cannot wait for the next disruption. It has to be built before the heat, smoke, storms or outages arrive.
The organizations and communities that prepare now will be better positioned to protect people, sustain performance and recover faster. And that preparation begins with recognizing extreme weather as a workforce risk — not a distant scenario, but a present and growing part of how we live and work.
Sign up for a June 18 webinar to learn how your organization can anticipate disruption, adapt under stress, and recover quickly with less loss.
Victoria Salinas is a nationally recognized leader in resilience, with senior experience across government, nonprofits and the private sector, including serving as deputy administrator for resilience at FEMA. She is currently a climate leader in residence at Duke University, serves on the boards of directors of national organizations, including ICLEI USA – Local Governments for Sustainability and the American Institute of Architects (AIA), and advises companies and organizations on translating risk and uncertainty into practical strategies, investment pathways, and workforce capabilities.
David Leathers is Director of Climate and Extreme Weather at the Health Action Alliance, helping businesses address climate-related risks to workers and build resilience across operations and communities. He previously advanced global sustainability standards at B Lab and led impact measurement initiatives at Deloitte.
