Summer’s Major and National Events to Entertain 60% of UK Workforce and Keep Them Off from Work

According to Jabra’s survey, the 2012 summer’s major and national events were expected to unsettle the office productivity. In fact, nearly 60% of office workers in UK claimed on planning to enjoy the worldwide sports events.

Considered as one of the communication device leaders in the industry, Jabra provided a guide for the employees to follow so as to minimize the summer’s sports events’ influence on their workforce. You can check out some of the awesome Jabra products from our store.

Based on the Jabra survey, here are the statistics that came out.

• 20% says they are in possession of this year’s games ticket
• 5% confesses the possibility of calling in sick just to watch their favorite event
• 25% admits that Athletics is a sport they would watch and so would most likely miss work for it
• 56% says their employer has yet to announce any plan to manage employee interest in the summer’s events
• 10% says they will participate in these year’s games as volunteers
• 17% admits that they will use their annual leave just to attend the event
• 16.6% says they will take holiday to watch on TV
• 18% claims that they will just follow the events on their work PC
• 9% says that they will follow events through their mobile

Still based on the Jabra survey, employees fail to do something about the disruption that the summer’s national and major events will cause. This can be proven by the following statistics:

• 20% says they have been given by their employers the choice to work from home, in the process they won’t miss the major events
• 17% states that they were offered flexible hours they can work on to combine watching the games with their work
• 8% says their employer is planning to introduce technology to make working more flexible just for the event

The disturbance, which the national and major events caused in year 2012, was expected to be worse in London. Despite the Transport for London’s warnings to makes sure to come up with another alternative for employees to avoid the chaos that will be brought about by the events, only 27% of the employees claim to be offered the alternative to work from home, which is a pretty low percentage.

Jabra CEO, Andrew Doyle, is convinced that the businesses are not putting much thought and effort in making sure that there is balance between office productivity and sport enthusiasm, which they could have done by concentrating on the current working trends. One of the trends evident is the work flexibility managed by the ‘GenM’, the new workforce generations who make use of their smart devices to work anywhere. Furthermore, Doyle said, “Employees are going to this summer’s events whatever their employers do. That’s why we have put together a guide to help businesses educate IT departments to meet the needs of today’s “always-on”, digitally-connected workforce, many of whom will be following the games at work on their personal IT devices. Rather than ignoring the impact of events this summer, we believe that those who get the planning right and introduce flexible working options now will find that they will benefit for years to come.”

Doyle also claimed that the main challenge of the businesses will be travel congestion. He added, “It just doesn’t make sense to allow staff to face the horrendous daily struggle of battling with thousands of tourists just to get to work, let alone the financial implications of doing so. It’s as simple as providing the right tools to enable staff to operate effectively without having to be tied to their desks.”

In addition to that, he concluded, “Many business are still underestimating the impact that this summer’s festivals, royal celebrations and sporting events will have on productivity. There is still time to put plans in place in order to maintain staff morale and ensure resourcing crises are kept to a minimum. Our handbook outlines what quick but effective measures can be taken to keep staff as productive and effective as normal, not just for this summer’s exciting events, but as an ongoing solution to congestion and a changing workforce that will pay dividends in later months and years.”