British businesses champion summer sport

• 60 per cent of British full-time employees tune-in to sport from work
• Over a third of businesses will enforce policies and controls
• Just seven per cent of organisations will ban sport outright

London, U.K., 30th July 2014 – The majority of Brits will be watching this summer’s sporting action from the office this year. New research from TalkTalk Business, one of the UK’s fastest-growing B2B telecoms operators, reveals that 60 per cent of employees will watch sport at work during the office hours this summer. While nine out of ten businesses will be permitting staff to do so, only 39 per cent are introducing policies to cope with the added network strain.

Between the World Cup, Wimbledon, the Tour de France and Commonwealth Games, Brits are spoilt for choice in sporting events this summer. With much of the action taking place over the traditional working day, TalkTalk Business surveyed 2,000 full-time workers to see just how many people would be tuning in from the office.

The majority of people are due to catch some of the action at work, meaning the variety and volume of devices connecting to the network will rise rapidly. The faithful office PC remains the preferred choice of device for most respondents (35 per cent), while others clearly favour the dual-screen approach, as employee-owned smartphones (32 per cent) and tablets (27 per cent) both garnered strong support.

Many organisations are putting measures in place to handle the extra pressure. Some 39 per cent of organisations are implementing IT policies, but the remaining 61 per cent of employees say either there is no policy in place or they don’t know what it is. Only 11 per cent say their bosses are restricting viewing to outside of office hours, while just seven per cent will ban it outright.

New government legislation introduced earlier this month gives any employee the right to request flexible working hours. More than one in five (22 per cent) of those surveyed planned to do so, while some said their company is allowing other modern working styles over the summer period. In 29 per cent of organisations, employees will be permitted to work from home, while 20 per cent will provide remote server access to homeworking staff. A further 8 per cent of companies are screening key events in the office.

“It’s great to see businesses embracing this summer’s action, but as ever there needs to be a degree of caution and control”, said Charles Bligh, managing director of TalkTalk Business.

“If employees are streaming high-quality content from various different devices at a time, the increased traffic is bound to have an effect. Having a business-grade network infrastructure in place is essential, but beyond that further restrictions may be required – though we certainly wouldn’t advocate a blanket ban.

“There are plenty of proactive steps to consider first, like screening the biggest events somewhere in the office, or offering staff the choice to work from home. By taking that route, bosses avoid damaging office morale while also reducing the burden on their network.”

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About TalkTalk Business:

• TalkTalk Business provides communications solutions to UK organisations, serving the needs of over 180,000 business and public sector customers and working with over 350 wholesale partners nationwide.
• The company has been dedicated to serving the needs of its customers across the UK since 1993.
• TalkTalk Business provides full range of communications products including one of the best data networks in the UK, (Ethernet, EFM , Fibre to the Cabinet and Broadband across 3000+ exchanges making it the largest Ethernet network in the UK) , Next Generation Voice products (VOIP) , Hosted Voice and Legacy Voice products for Channel Partners and Direct Customers.
• Following an investment of over £600M, TalkTalk Business has designed, built and now operates Britain’s biggest Next Generation Network, with 95% coverage across the UK, for broadband and voice.

Source: RealWire