‘Tis the Season for Web-Skiving!

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According to an article on the Guardian.co.ukover the next 3 days, those of us unlucky enough to be working will spend an average of 2 hours per day skiving on the Internet when the boss isn’t looking.  That’s 25% of a standard working day spent unproductively browsing news and shopping websites if the survey conducted by hotels.com is accurate.   Miranda Sawyer of the Observer salutes the skivers for making the most of the fact they are being made to attend work when traditionally there is very little that can, or needs to be done.

I’m not sure I would be saluting anybody who chose to spend their time browsing the web when they had other work to be doing but it does raise the question about whether it is worthwhile companies opening their doors at this time of year.  Given that (according to these stats) everyone is working at a maximum of 75% capacity or maybe even less, and a lot of people will be struggling to do their day job due to the absences at supplier and partner companies, would it be more cost effective to shut down completely?  It certainly suggests it would be worth weighing up both the tangible and intangible pros and cons of each option.  Overheads, opportunity cost, staff morale etc.  It is a bit of a long standing tradition on office based environments to have a presence over the festive week but maybe it is time for this to change in the name of good business sense??