A flooded parking lot can stop a business cold. A heat wave that drags into its second week can do the same, as can a hurricane that knocks out a key supplier 500 miles away. Severe weather rarely shows up at a convenient time, and the damage often reaches past the building it hits.
Steve Ashkin, founder of The Ashkin Group and a co-chair of the ISSA Sustainability Committee, wants organizations to plan for these events the same way they plan for any other business risk. He is quick to point out the subject has nothing to do with politics or climate science debates. What matters to him is “just the sheer fact that extreme weather is happening and is going to continue to happen.”
He makes a small list. “It may be more floods, more wind events, more heat waves, more cold waves,” Ashkin said. “Who knows? But what we do know is it’s absolutely, positively going to happen. And this can put our businesses at risk.”
The cost of waiting is real
The numbers back him up. In Sustainability in Action 2026, a September report from Sweep and Capgemini based on a survey of 1,000 senior business leaders, 94% said their companies suffered climate-related financial losses over the previous two years. Nearly one in three lost more than $1 million.
Smaller operators shouldn’t assume those figures only apply to big corporations. A short closure can hurt for months.
“If you’re just shut down for a couple of weeks, that lost revenue can impact the profitability of your company over the entire year,” Ashkin explained. “This is serious stuff, and we need to just prepare for it, like other risks to our business.”
The timing adds urgency. The handbook Ashkin helped develop for ISSA members points to El Niño as a driver of weather risk in 2026, and NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Advisory in September, projecting a strong event through the fall and winter of 2026-27. El Niño reshuffles regional weather patterns, bringing more rain and flooding to some areas and drought, heat or cold to others.
Start with a free planning tool
ISSA members have free access to the Preparing for El Niño and Extreme Weather Events Handbook along with a companion AI agent, available at green2weather.cognitive-corp.com. The agent draws only on the handbook, and it tailors its guidance to the user’s location, season and type of business, whether that’s a service provider, distributor or manufacturer.
“Nobody wants to read a 120-page handbook,” Ashkin said. “If you’ve got 15 minutes, you can go and talk to this thing, explain who you are, where you’re located … and it’ll tell you, well, here are the three things you should do, and here are four checklists you can use.”
Once the likely risks are clear, Ashkin recommends a simple next step: walk the site for an hour. Look at the facility with flooding, drought, wildfire, wind, heat or cold in mind, depending on what the region faces.
“Check your drains, check your backup power, think about things stored on the floor, think about your computer systems and how you’re backing everything up, and what you’re doing with that backup,” he said.
From there, write down what happens if the most important part of the operation stops for a day or a week, or even a month.
Look after the crew first
People are the first priority when weather turns dangerous, whether they are in their own building, working at a client site or driving between jobs. Ashkin stressed that preparation needs to happen before the heat or cold arrives, with a plan that’s communicated clearly to everyone.
That means water and rest breaks in the heat, plus layered clothing and ice cleats in the cold. New hires need extra attention. Ease them into hot or strenuous conditions over seven to 14 days, which lines up with OSHA’s guidance on heat acclimatization.
“They’re the ones in some respects that are going to be most at risk,” Ashkin noted. “So not only do you not want to harm their health, but you don’t want to keep going through the process of hiring and retraining people.”
He also encourages leaders to give crews permission to stop or take breaks when conditions get extreme.
“If it’s 100 degrees out and 90% humidity, man, that is brutal,” Ashkin said. “I know the work has to get done, but you really have to consider at what expense.”
Drivers need their own preparation, whether they operate company trucks or are simply commuting to a job. Training should cover driving on ice and snow, when to pull over and who to call. Never drive through floodwater; turn around and find another route.
“If a delivery driver is stuck because of a road being flooded, do they know what to do?” Ashkin asked. “Do they know what to do if communications, if cell phone service is out?”
Rerouting and arriving late should come without penalty. Ashkin also urges employers to help workers protect their families, since an employee worried about home can’t focus on the job.
“It makes it really hard on our workers,” he said. “And frankly, they may not show up to work because of a need to take care of [their families].”
Water and wind do the most damage
Protecting buildings, vehicles and equipment starts with understanding the threat. Flooding tops the list.
“Water is one of the biggest challenges we deal with, whether it’s just heavy rains, whether it’s hurricanes, whatever it is,” Ashkin said.
Clear roofs, gutters and drains every year, and make sure parking lots give water somewhere to go. Ask what rising water could reach, float or carry away. Inventory on lower rack levels, electronics, records and chemicals all belong off the floor. Vehicles should stay out of low-lying lots when heavy rain is in the forecast.
High winds from tornadoes and hurricanes call for a different walk-through.
“Think about what could fly around,” Ashkin said. Dumpsters, garbage cans, pallets stored outside, signs and outdoor furniture can all become airborne. Secure them, chain them down or bring them indoors. Loose items can cause more damage than the storm itself.
Leasing a building doesn’t take a company off the hook. “There’s things that you can do, again, whether you own the building or not, because it’ll damage your building and cause all kinds of problems for you,” Ashkin added. “So just consider this stuff, and talk to your landlord about it, too.”
Test the plan in 30 minutes
A plan only works if people know it. Ashkin suggests a 30-minute “what if” meeting with managers built around one realistic scenario.
“Talk about what happens if it floods, or if there’s three feet of snow dropped on the ground, or whatever it is that’s likely to happen to your organization, and just walk them through,” he said. “What’s going to happen? What do we have in place? What’s missing? How do we hear from our people, or how do our people hear from us?”
Fix the top one or two gaps that surface, then run another scenario later.
“This is what business is all about,” Ashkin said. “And more importantly, this is what leadership is about.”
When customers and suppliers go dark
Weather doesn’t have to hit a company’s own building to cause trouble. A shutdown at a major customer or supplier can ripple through revenue, crew schedules and cash flow. Ashkin recommends spending an hour in a senior leadership meeting running through those scenarios. What happens if the biggest customer closes for two weeks? What about a month?
“Let’s say there’s some weather event and let’s say 50% of your workforce doesn’t show up. What do you do?” Ashkin asked. “Are there some customers that, man, if you mess up the account, if you lose them, would be catastrophic for your business?”
Identifying those key accounts, along with what they need and how delayed billing would affect cash flow, exposes the single points of failure worth shoring up.
Preparedness can also mean new business
Severe weather creates problems for customers, and Ashkin sees a business opportunity in helping solve them.
“Maybe you can offer specialized services to help your clients, or maybe you should negotiate with rental companies so that you can make sure you have access to equipment that might be necessary, like wet-dry vacs and air movers to dry floors and whatever you may need,” he said.
Other options include offering customers a preparedness assessment, setting up priority-response agreements, arranging access to extraction units and air scrubbers, pre-positioning materials at client sites and getting training in remediation work. Partnering with certified restoration firms is another route. Whatever the arrangement, Ashkin advises keeping terms fair and transparent.
Strong relationships work in both directions. Helping customers through a weather event builds loyalty, and closer ties with suppliers improve the odds they will come through when supplies are tight.
A first step for this week
To get started this week, Ashkin suggests trying the free AI agent and watching the ISSA webinar Preparing for Extreme Weather Events, which walks through the handbook and demonstrates the tool. After that, set aside 15 minutes with the leadership team to think through the biggest exposure. Pick one fix and put it on the calendar.
For those who want to go further, Ashkin invites ISSA members to join the ISSA Sustainability Committee, a volunteer group with members from around the world that meets the second Tuesday of every month at noon Eastern Time. Some may wonder what extreme weather has to do with sustainability. Ashkin has a direct answer.
“If you run out of money or a hurricane knocks out your business, staying in business is actually really important,” he said.
Watch the complete webinar or listen to the podcast below
