UK workforce not rocked by World Cup knock-out

Despite predictions that the UK economy would grind to a halt the day after England’s World Cup, data collected by FirstCare tells a completely different story.

Of the 184,000 employees whose absence is monitored by the company they work for, fewer than 7,000 took a sick day on 12 July.

In fact, this figure was eclipsed by that of 2 July, where 7,669 employees were absent from work following a Sunday when the home nation didn’t feature.

When normalised to the UK working population of 31 million, this equates to 1.2 million days lost to absence – nowhere near the 5 million that some research was suggesting.

Steve Carter, commercial director for FirstCare said:

Despite bleak predictions, it appears levels of absenteeism haven’t peaked significantly in the days following a game involving England. In fact, the trend is pretty much the same as the weeks leading up to the World Cup and when comparing it with previous years.

Employers and employees alike can take great credit for this as it clearly demonstrates that proper planning had been done, and contingency put in place.

Employees have been careful to manage annual leave to fit in with the fixture schedules and employers have been offering greater flexibility and working arrangements to suit. The knock-out didn’t rock the UK workforce after all.”

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