Extreme heat is becoming a business risk: is your organisation prepared?

14 August 2026 Climate Risk & Resilience

Summer 2026 has provided UK businesses with another reminder that extreme heat is no longer something that can be dismissed as an occasional weather event.

The Met Office says summer 2026 is currently on course to become the warmest UK summer on record. During the June heatwave, the UK also recorded a new high daily minimum temperature of 23.5°C, while England experienced its warmest spring since records began in 1884.¹

For businesses, that matters.

Extreme heat affects far more than whether employees feel uncomfortable in an office. It can influence productivity, staff health, machinery, IT systems, buildings, transport, supply chains and energy demand.

Increasingly, heat resilience needs to sit alongside flooding, cyber security, energy security and other risks within business continuity planning.

What does extreme heat mean for businesses?

Different organisations experience heat differently.

A professional services firm may find that an older office becomes unbearably hot in the afternoon. A manufacturer could face heat-related risks around equipment, processes and PPE. Warehouses and logistics businesses need to consider both employees and temperature-sensitive goods.

Construction, agriculture, hospitality, healthcare and organisations with employees working outdoors face another set of challenges altogether.

The Health and Safety Executive advises employers to assess heat stress risks and consider factors including air temperature, humidity, workload and work clothing. It also advises employers to identify employees who may be particularly susceptible to heat stress.²

There is no single temperature at which every workplace automatically becomes unsafe. The practical question is whether your working conditions present a risk and what you can reasonably do about it.

That means heat deserves the same structured approach as other workplace hazards.

The problem is bigger than employee comfort

Businesses should also look beyond occupational health.

Buildings

Many UK commercial buildings were designed around a different climate.

Large glazed areas, poorly shaded windows, limited natural ventilation and heat-producing equipment can all contribute to overheating.

Air conditioning may provide an immediate solution, but simply increasing mechanical cooling can create higher energy costs and additional pressure on electricity demand.

Businesses considering refurbishments should therefore be thinking about shading, ventilation, insulation, reflective surfaces, landscaping and passive cooling alongside conventional air conditioning.

Technology

Servers, communications equipment, batteries and electrical systems all operate within temperature ranges.

A hot office may be uncomfortable. An overheated server room can become a business continuity problem.

Organisations should know:

which systems are temperature-sensitive;
where monitoring is required;
whether cooling has backup power;
and what happens if equipment automatically shuts down.

People and productivity

Heat can affect concentration, physical performance and fatigue.

The impact will not be uniform across a workforce. Employees carrying out physical work are likely to experience heat differently from someone sitting at a desk, while age, health, medication and pregnancy can also affect vulnerability.

That makes flexible responses more useful than a blanket policy.

Moving working hours, increasing rest periods, providing drinking water, changing uniforms or PPE where safely possible, allowing home working and temporarily relocating teams may all form part of the response.

Is extreme heat really a long-term UK business issue?

The evidence increasingly suggests that it is.

The Met Office’s latest State of the UK Climate assessment shows how temperature extremes are changing. Across Greater London, for example, days above 30°C and nights above 18°C were more than four times as common during 2016–2025 as during 1961–1990. The average hottest day of the year has also warmed by more than 4.5°C across parts of England stretching from Kent towards Lincolnshire.³

Met Office scientists have also modelled a plausible UK temperature of 45°C by 2056 under future climate conditions. That is not a forecast that Britain will reach 45°C in a particular year. It is an indication of the conditions businesses may need to be capable of operating within during the lifetime of buildings, infrastructure and investments being planned today.⁴

That distinction is important.

Climate resilience is not about trying to predict precisely what the weather will do on a Tuesday afternoon 20 years from now.

It is about asking whether the organisation is robust enough to cope with a wider range of conditions.

Five questions every business can ask

You do not necessarily need an expensive climate consultant to start.

Ask:

Which parts of our operation would fail first during several consecutive days of very high temperatures?

Consider employees, IT, refrigeration, machinery, buildings, transport and suppliers.

Which employees are most exposed?

Office workers, drivers, warehouse staff and outdoor workers experience heat differently.

Does our business continuity plan include extreme heat?

Many continuity plans cover fire, flooding, power outages and cyber incidents but say little about prolonged heat.

Are planned investments suitable for the climate they will experience?

A building refurbishment or piece of infrastructure installed in 2026 may still be operating in the 2040s or 2050s.

Who owns the risk?

Facilities, HR, health and safety, IT, operations and senior management may all hold pieces of the answer. Someone needs oversight of the whole picture.

From climate issue to business issue

Perhaps the biggest shift is one of language.

Extreme heat does not need to be viewed primarily as an environmental initiative.

It is an issue of people, productivity, assets, operational resilience and business continuity.

And that makes it relevant to organisations regardless of where they sit in the wider climate debate.

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