Is Festive Drinking Impacting your Contact Centre Performance?

It can be tough get insight on employees’ personal lives, but new research has shown how seriously their work can be affected by Christmas drinking habits.

Research from Direct365 has found that 24.5% of people consume alcohol on ‘work nights’ during the Christmas season, impacting both health and performance.

In the holiday season, people are encouraged to ‘get into the Christmas spirit’ by drinking alcohol more frequently, at after-work drinks and parties. It is deemed socially acceptable to drink more than the recommended daily allowance, even if people have to work the next day.

The NHS recommends that men should drink no more than 3 – 4 units a day, while women should stick to 2 – 3 units in order to prevent any damage to their bodies. That’s around one pint of strong beer for men and a standard 175ml glass of wine for women. However, nobody is naive enough to think that Christmas revellers will follow these guidelines.

There are many factors which influence how long alcohol will stay in your system such as your weight, size, age and your individual reaction to alcohol. It is estimated that one large glass of wine (250ml) would take an average person around three hours to break down. Therefore if you consume a few drinks during the night, your body will need longer to remove it from your system. Waking from an alcohol-heavy night and starting the working day could have serious consequences. Employees may find themselves over the drink driving limit and the alcohol in their bloodstream will likely affect their performance at work.

Your contact centre is not legally required to implement alcohol and drug policies. However, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 states that employers have a responsibility to look after the health, safety and wellbeing of their staff.

One way to generate awareness is to place posters around the workplace, informing them of drink driving limits and clearly displaying how many units of alcohol is too many.

“Many of us are guilty of drinking more than we should during the Christmas period, and nobody wants to be a festive killjoy, but when people overindulge on week nights it could have serious consequences the next day while they are at work,” said Emma Gilroy, Brand Development Manager at Direct365.

What are you doing to deal with performance?