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Online Christmas could cost Britain billions

BRITISH businesses are expected to loose £275million in lost productivity today, and around £2.5billion in total between now and Christmas experts have warned.

Today has been dubbed ‘Manic Monday’ by online retailers, who expect Brits to spend a staggering £537m over the internet in the next 24 hours.

While this will be good for e-tailers the growing popularity of online shopping, combined with the fledgling recovery, may result in businesses everywhere footing the bill as the trend to shop online results in poor productivity as workers go gift-hunting from their desks.

Peter Mooney, an employment law expert with compliance advisors, ELAS, said: “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.

“So while internet retailers might expect to be manic, for those employers whose staff are doing the shopping from the desk, today will be anything but.”

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 £12.97, that could amount to a total of £2.475billion in lost time during the next 18 working days to December 22.

To combat the problem Mr Mooney encouraged employers to remind staff of their responsibilities and believes Manic Monday is the perfect opportunity to do this.

Peter Mooney, added: “A simple internet policy outlining what is acceptable personal use during work time, together with what action staff can expect for breaching that, circulated on Manic Monday should be enough for most staff to toe the line.

“Without that, not only could bosses lose a lot of work time to bargain hunting, they could come unstuck legally for taking excessive action when they do deal with it.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .