I don’t always praise, but I will shower some praise on British
Airways today. Not for their service, flights,
destinations or lounges, but for their inflight magazine Business Life.
It always inspires me a little as, each
month, the BA Business Life magazine
publishes a bunch of trivia facts that are useless, apart from giving you a
moment of reflection of life today.
So here are some of their most recent useless but interesting facts:
- 8 out of 10 of the world’s most pessimistic countries are European
- 46 cheques are issues by each French citizen every year, compared
to an average of 2 for all of the 27 European member states combined - £17.2 billion was spent on advertising in the UK last year
- £26.1 million is the earnings for Madonna last year, making
her the highest paid music artist of 2012 - 7.8 million Brits are struggling to make their mortgage payments
- £26,500 is the average full-time salary in Britain
- 68% of UK private sector employees have no workplace retirement
savings scheme - 25% of 65 to 74 year olds are still earning a wage
- £732 is the average cost of agreeing to be a bridesmaid or
maid of honour - £393 is spent on Starbucks-style hot takeaway drinks by the
average Brit each year - £302 is spent on average by parents on electronic gadgets
for their children - 43% of mothers read to their children every day, compared to
26% of fathers - 75% of the world’s heads of state are on Twitter
- 1 in 10 teenagers have over 1,000 online friends
- 11% of British workers have had an embarrassing photo take
of them at work and posted on a social media site - 11% of shared social media content are photos of animals
- 600,000 illegal attempts to access Facebook accounts are made
every day - 29% of gym members do not work up a sweat
- 10% of Brits have not cleaned their bathrooms in the last
month - 79% of British expats plan never to return to the UK
- 53% of UK employees steal confidential corporate data
- 1.035 billion people were international tourists last year,
up 4%
Sources in order of
listing: Nielsen, Central Bank of Ireland, WARC, Billboard, YouGov, Shelter, ONS,
YouGov, Aviva, ONS, Orsavelt, LV=, Opinum,
DPC, MB Learning Solutions/AA, AVG, Brainjuicer for Three, Facebook, Spontex, Kettler,
Symantec, UNWTO
There’s a whole bunch more but the one that stat that really
rocked my socks is this one:
ONE IN TEN UK WORKERS
RECEVIE OVER 1,000 EMAILS EVERY DAY
They do not attribute the stat source, so I investigated and
cannot find it either.
Is it true?
No.
It would be a shock for 10% of workers to receive that
amount of mail.
Instead, the truth is that:
ONE IN TWELVE UK
WORKERS RECEIVES OVER 100 EMAILS EVERY DAY
This figure I can corroborate from yesterday’s Daily Mail about how technology has changed our lives.
According to the research published:
- British workers send and receive 10,000 emails a year
- Over 10% of people spend their whole day on a computer
- 58% of workers think that technology has made us more
productive* - 57% log into their inbox outside of work hours
- 85% of these workers say it makes them more productive*
- The average UK worker sends and receives 40 emails a day
- 1 in 12 people receive more than 100 emails daily
- 1 in 5 never put pen to paper
- 1 in 4 do not remember life before email
* Researchers looked at how office technology has changed
since the 1970s and found that productivity has only risen by 2% since the
introduction of email
These figures are all part of a study produced by Warwick
Business School supporting npower's online archive 'Remember How We Used To
Work',
and shows just how reliant we have become on technology.
By the way, I am one of those who get about 1,000 emails a
day. Consequently, I cannot keep up with
the amount of email that comes through and send apologies to all those who
email me.
Postnote: the British Airways Business Life Magazine app is available for free from iTunes for the iPod and iPad … and no, this blog is
not sponsored by BA and this entry has not been sponsored or paid for. I just like numbers and stats as many of you will
know.
Chris M Skinner
Chris Skinner is best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets through his blog, TheFinanser.com, as author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and Chair of the European networking forum the Financial Services Club. He has been voted one of the most influential people in banking by The Financial Brand (as well as one of the best blogs), a FinTech Titan (Next Bank), one of the Fintech Leaders you need to follow (City AM, Deluxe and Jax Finance), as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in financial technology by the Wall Street Journal's Financial News. To learn more click here...