Don't Call IT This Afternoon | Waves PR, freelance PR consultant, UK

Don’t Call IT This Afternoon

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Nope – this isn’t a post about how technology has brought us the World Cup, but how technologists are reacting – in England at least.

A friend of mine, Katrina, works with the ITJ obBoard, which ran a survey amongst IT professionals about the World Cup.

I had a giggle when I read it. Only 21 percent of respondents said their employers had put plans in place to enable them to watch key games during working hours. (15 percent also thought their companies were stricter this year than for the previous World Cup in 2006 - unsurprising in so many ways – the fever was crazy and it was almost impossible to get any work done!)

But ask the employers and 80 percent were offering flexible hours. It was a fair sized sample as well. Maybe people don’t know their employers have this option – they have an hour to find out!

Only 14% of IT folk had prebooked time off, and only 8% were planning sickies. But hold on – 8 plus 14 is 22, so that’s 22% of folk planning to take the time – one in five IT workers by my calculations.

So there you have it – one in five IT workers won’t be at their desks. And given that today is the first England match that this can be tested at, and this was just what they were prepared to confess to, better hope you don’t need the IT department this afternoon.

Claire Thompson, freelance PR Consultant, Waves PR

Shutdown: Country Grinds To Halt For Game (news.sky.com)
Bosses deny workers England v Slovenia World Cup match (telegraph.co.uk)
‘England can still win World Cup. And I haven’t gone crazy’ (independent.co.uk)
ANS staves off sickies with World Cup party (channelweb.co.uk)
Third Of Fans To Pull World Cup Sickies (news.sky.com)
World Cup 2010: absences jump on day of England v Algeria (telegraph.co.uk)

Tags: Technology & Telecoms 2

just because I can!, tech & telecoms | claireatwaves | June 23, 2010 2:43 pm

3 Comments

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