Reading: Calls for flexi-time after Conti tyres survey reveals 9 million Brits will throw a sickie

By Denna Bowman

After the news that nine million UK employees will throw a sickie so they can watch the latest World Cup action, according to a Continental tyres survey, bosses are being urged to introduce more flexible working hours.

The tyres company study also claimed that footie fans will use over 31,000,000 excuses so they can stay home and keep up to date with the matches being played in South Africa.

So, the Trades Union Congress is calling on businesses to introduce greater flexibility rather then ‘run the risk of de-motivating staff and losing hours through unauthorised sick days’.

Piers Linney, joint CEO of Outsourcery said: “Businesses need to prevent absenteeism, and by adopting greater flexible working practices, they will benefit from a happier workforce while allowing their employees to be productive and patriotic at the same time.”

He said the World Cup was a perfect opportunity to be more forward-thinking in human resources policy.

Linney said: “Outsourcery will be screening the games for the benefit of staff who want to watch, and as over 86% of our staff has access to a remote working solution and 100% have remote access to their email via Outlook Web Access, we can be flexible without it impacting on our customer support’.

A survey by YouGov found that out of 1,485 male workers, 35% would reschedule a meeting to watch a crucial match.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 at 6:44 am and is filed under Continental, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.