Australian businesses to lose $290m over world cup in offices

Stan Beer
Wednesday, 17 May 2006 20:28

Your IT - Home IT

The four weeks of the World Cup are set to be the least productive of 2006, costing Australian business $290 million in lost productivity, predicts content security software provider Marshal.

For the first time in 32 years, Australia has qualified to compete in the World Cup.  With high hopes of a good performance from the Socceroos team, fans across Australia will be keeping a close eye on web-streamed matches, replays, scores and results. All of which is bad news to employers, where the rise of interest will have the opposite affect on productivity during the tournament.

Research shows that around 4.5million viewers witnessed the Socceroos qualify against Uruguay in November 2005. And, many of these spectators are expected to follow the highest viewed sporting event on earth. 

For the majority of followers locked in desk-based jobs, Internet-access during working hours is set to be their prime source for the latest on the tournament. This is set to cause a significant drop in productivity as employees check the Net during the day for details on matches aired over night. It will also compromise IT service as they download videos and interactive scoreboards, eating up valuable bandwidth.

“Every major sporting event sees the same pattern," says Ed Macnair, CEO of Marshal. "Because of the popularity of football and the qualification of the Socceroos, the four weeks of the World Cup are certain to be some of the least productive of the year. Employers need to be prepared to set policies for acceptable Internet use. By implementing policies to limit Internet access to certain sites to lunch time, and before and after working hours, companies are able to control productivity and corporate bandwidth issues."

With employees hungry for information while at work, the Ashes series saw high use of web sites like www.baggygreen.com.au and local news sources. Similarly access to web-based sports sites peaked during the Athens Olympics and Melbourne Commonwealth Games.

If one in ten of Australia’s 10 million employed people2 with an average hourly wage of $27 an hour3spend 30 minutes a day catching up on the World Cup for the 21 days working days that tournament is played, the results will be more than 12.5 million hours of lost productivity.  This does not include reduced employee effectiveness caused by the late nights and early mornings required to view live matches in Australia.