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SCROOGES BLAME SANTA FOR WORKPLACE SLACKERS

The soaring popularity of online Christmas shopping could cost British businesses more than £7 billion, according to some Scrooge-like experts.
Online sales are set to hit £9 billion this Christmas after more than two million people took up shopping on the Internet in the past twelve months. But employment law experts have warned that the cost on British businesses could be huge because too many workers up and down the country will be logging on to search for last minute presents. For many employers, every hour a member of staff spends looking for Christmas presents online is an hour they should have spent working.
Party-pooping experts are warning that this could cost UK businesses billions during the festive season.
Working on an average of half an hour a day spent shopping online, and an average hourly wage of £12.50, the employment law society estimates that UK employers could stand to lose almost a billion pounds a week in lost work time.
That could amount to almost £7.25 billion in lost time. They claim that with sophisticated – and at times, addictive - websites now geared to keeping shoppers online for as long as possible, even an occasional glance can turn into half an hour browsing. It advises employers to set out a specific Internet policy outlining what is and what is not acceptable during work time. By taking such action, employers not only remind their staff not to abuse work systems, but give themselves a solid basis on which to take action whenever anyone oversteps the mark, they advise. Who ever said the spirit of Christmas was dead…?

Meanwhile, here’s a round up of the latest festive financial facts and figures:

• On average a person will spend £390 on Christmas gifts this year. This is an increase of 18% on 2005. Making up the top 5 gifts are music, clothes, gift vouchers, books and cosmetics.
• Christmas day costs approximately £975 per household. For a 12 hour day this works out at £1.35per minute and £81.27 per hour.
• The average household expenditure on food and drink is likely to rise by 2% to £163. Christmas lunch will cost on average £14 per head.
• According to Credit Action, total UK spending on cards, cash and cheques is predicted to reach £51.6 billion during December 2006. Festive spending on plastic is set to reach £31.8 billion (which is an 11.6% increase on December 2005). This equates to an average spend on plastic cards in December 2006 of £1,287 per household (£462 on credit cards and £825 on debit cards).
• Christmas is the most significant event in the UK's retail calendar with many outlets making up to 60% of their annual turnover between November and January.
• According to the British Retail Consortium the average family accumulates 18% of their annual borrowing in December by spending twice as much than in any other month of the year

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