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.