And frozen again. We’re staring at an unflattering still image during the video conference. What can cause amusement ends at the latest when our IT department sends an email to everyone: Bigger problems with the internet! Sorry, it’s our turn!
Unfortunately, this is not an isolated case in German offices, according to a current online survey conducted by the German internet node operator DE-CIX. The results are exclusively available to BILD.
The limitations caused by poor internet connections add up to an average of 46 minutes per week, in total almost a full working week per year (35 hours).
Of all office workers surveyed, 85 percent say they lose work time due to delays in using the internet at work. For 42 percent of respondents who experience delays, that loss amounts to more than half an hour per week. For 18 percent it is more than an hour, for eleven percent this lost time amounts to more than two hours a week.
If you calculate what this means for the German economy, you can get dizzy.
The average annual working time in 2021 was exactly 1602.5 hours. Provided that the employee is employed full-time. The average gross salary of Germans in the same year was 49,200 euros.
The loss of an employer because his employee cannot work because of the weakening internet is on average 1228 euros per year.
60,000 euros loss for a small business!
For a small company with up to 49 employees, that means a loss of around 60,000 euros per year, and for a medium-sized company with up to 249 employees, it even means a loss of 300,000 euros!
A good half of those employed in Germany (55 percent) work in small and medium-sized companies. In the third quarter, that was around 25 million.
That would mean: Because of the bad internet, companies lose more than 30 billion euros in manpower every year!