Internet downtime at work costing UK economy £11billion a year

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The average employee in the UK loses an average of 38 hours, or £494 worth of productivity each year due to slow Internet access or I.T. downtime, according to research commissioned by the Daisy Group and conducted by One Poll.

Based on 72% of the UK’s 30 million strong workforce being affected, that equates to around £11 billion a year.

The research found that 7% of the 2,000 adults surveyed experienced failed Internet connections more than 10 times in any given seven day period with an average downtime of 14.5 minutes. During downtime or periods of slow Internet connectivity, 60% of those surveyed said they use their smartphones for non-related work activities such as checking social media and shopping. Nine percent used their mobile device to look for another job.

“Too many businesses are still relying on basic ADSL connections that are aimed at the residential users. These are the businesses that struggle to cope with the high-bandwidth demands of software and apps that workers use,” said Jan Wielenga, product manager for data networks at Daisy Group.



”It is simply unacceptable for businesses that rely heavily on the internet to experience periods of downtime, particularly at a time when fibre and dedicated Ethernet connections have never been more affordable and available. 

The internet going down or running slowly for 44 minutes per week doesn’t sound much, but the result of any loss of productivity is that businesses can suffer.” 


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristina Knight-1
Kristina Knight, Journalist , BA
Content Writer & Editor
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Kristina Knight is a freelance writer with more than 15 years of experience writing on varied topics. Kristina’s focus for the past 10 years has been the small business, online marketing, and banking sectors, however, she keeps things interesting by writing about her experiences as an adoptive mom, parenting, and education issues. Kristina’s work has appeared with BizReport.com, NBC News, Soaps.com, DisasterNewsNetwork, and many more publications.