It’s unlikely to have missed your attention that there is a major international soccer tournament taking place at the moment. And if you suspected that productivity would be down as a result of the World Cup, then you’d be right!
In an interesting article in Quartz written this week, it’s clear that the World Cup affected productivity in corporate America. Looking at data on the volume of conference calls – and using this as a proxy for productivity – they found that during the final minutes of last week’s US-Germany match, conference call volume was down 11% versus the previous week. Throughout the match, the conference call volume showed a fairly steady decline, with a slight increase during half time – pretty clearly showing that business professionals were taking breaks to watch the match.
Though corporate America will likely see its productivity rise again following the unfortunate defeat of the US team at the hands of Belgium, it’s no news that conference calls are often disliked because of common frustrations that decrease productivity; just take this Dilbert cartoon or the ‘Conference Call in Real Life’ video that recently went viral. However, in this case it seems that conference calls were being avoided not because of common frustrations, but rather for something altogether more entertaining. Best of luck to the remaining teams in the World Cup!
