smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Festive gift buying will cost businesses £5 billion as email discounts tempt workers to shop from their desks, according to a business support specialist.
 
ELAS says that workers will be encouraged by email discount sites to respond as soon as they get the email in the morning.
 
As a result, employees often spend the first 30 minutes to an hour of any working day reading their discount emails then shop around online before redeeming the deals, says the organisation.
 
Peter Mooney, head of employment law for ELAS says, ‘Every year, more people are going online for Christmas presents, and even those who don’t will end up spending hours window shopping on the internet.
 
‘But while in the past few years, we’ve seen that most workers sensibly do this in their lunch hours or after 5pm, the explosion in deals sites such as Groupon are causing people to do their shopping at the start of the day.’
 
When including the time it takes to sift through the original emails, ELAS expects full-time workers to spend an average of 30 minutes a day shopping from their desks in the run up to Christmas.
 
Working on an average hourly wage of £12.60, that could amount to a total of £5.3 billion in lost time during the next 40 working days to December 23.
 
Mooney adds that if the activity was restricted to lunch hours, most employees would have no complaint.
 
‘Those who leave the office and shop on the high street during their lunch hours have already spent valuable time in the morning looking for ideas or comparing prices from their desks when they should be working,’ he says.
 
‘No boss wants to shoot a hole through goodwill and office morale by playing Scrooge in the office, but this time adds up and, in reality, costs money.’

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