Peninsula Ireland are at it again. A few weeks ago there was a pile of rubbish about facebook profiles and people being sacked for being caught on a sickie or something. I’ve no doubt that some muppets do stupid things on facebook but the amount of stuff that Peninsula were indicating as ‘fact’ left me shouting at their interviewee on the radio – 87 percent of bosses checking staff facebook profiles to see if employees were really sick and 74 percent of employees having been caught pulling a sickie by their bosses by their facebook profile. (Like you would have your boss friended so he could see all your info and then go and post something about a duvet day or fake headache??)

Seemingly Peninsula Ireland are an employment law firm – they seem to be the Irish subsidiary of a UK set up. They do event organisation and the like too.

They are also very busy churning out surveys – lots of them.

The latest bit of genius says that one in six Irish employees planned to take the day off on Wednesday to recover from watching the US election results the night before. They also added that employers were anxious that other employees might call in sick instead of taking the day off.

Finally the research indicated that some employers were bringing in Televisions and Radios to help staff listen to results so that they would not have to take time off. Bless their cotton socks!!

Now the US election was hardly Italia ’90. The results came in between midnight and 6 am. I have no doubt that many people like me took the day off on Wednesday or changed our working day to have a later start. However it was nowhere near 1 in 6 of the Irish workforce!

This wonderful piece of research (aka PR to get ‘the name of the company out there for employers and create a climate of panic about employees taking sickies and pay us to help you manage/discipline/sack them’) was based on a sample size of 527 employees and 175 employers. It was conducted by email or telephone.

So did your company bring in a television to your workplace so you could ‘soak up the drama of the results unfolding.’ Come on, lets find the companies who had tellys specially brought in for the night shift election junkies? Let’s give your company their 5 minutes of fame!!

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