HR on 'The Ice': in the extreme conditions of Antarctica, there is no place for weak HR practices

The terms "remote" and "primitive" are particularly apt to describe life at South Pole Station, the coldest and least accessible of the three U.S. bases.

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"Pole people think they are really special," says Clarissa Weir, SPHR, with a laugh. "They say we haven't really been to Antarctica because McMurdo isn't on the continent." (The station is located on an island off the coast in McMurdo Sound.) Weir, a Society for Human Resource Management member, heads the HR department at McMurdo Station during the winter.

While seawater can be processed for use at McMurdo, the water supply for Pole must come from melted ice, so restrictions are stringent. Pole's senior HR generalist, Andrea Dixon, reports that "We are allowed two, two-minute showers per week and one small load of laundry per week."

Lori Boruch, senior manager of human resources for the Raytheon Polar Services Co. program, says, "At Pole, they'll get on your case if they think you look too clean. People there really monitor water use."

Living quarters at Pole are "incredibly small," Dixon says, and some employees still live in "Jamesways"--Army-type tents with metal frames and furnaces. (These will be retired when a new building, currently under construction, is completed.) The heat is hard to regulate in these tents, she says, and Jamesway-dwellers must go to another building to use the bathroom. At night, they use a big coffee can to avoid going out in the cold.

Winter at Pole is long and cold, with about six months of nonstop darkness. "It's always so cold here that going from minus 40 degrees to minus 80 or minus 100 degrees doesn't make a big difference in the way we live," says Dixon, "except that our heavy equipment will stop running at those [lower] temperatures."