Virgin Media’s Broadband Data Suggest Brits Clock Off Early on Fridays
Broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) has published some new insights from their fixed line network, which among other things reveals a fall in UK data traffic on Friday afternoons during the summer months, with as much as an 8% dip between 3-5pm compared to the winter, as “remote workers clock off early“.
Alongside the new network data, Virgin Media also asked an unspecified number of Britons – via polling insights based off a nationally representative survey conducted by Strand Partners for O2 – about their work policies and working habits in order to “fully understand the trend“.
The results found that 30% of Brits say they have a formal early Friday finish in place during the summer, while 48% said they’re not authorised to finish early on a Friday, and 32% say they regularly log off with or without official permission. Finally, 20% of Brits said that while they don’t have official early finishes, it’s now become informally accepted behaviour in their workplace.
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Summary of Additional Results
➤ 61% feel they’ve earned the right to clock off early after a busy week.
➤ 59% say they don’t feel at all guilty about heading off early to start their weekend on Fridays.
➤ 63% of Brits saying they feel more productive earlier in the week if they can look ahead to finishing earlier on Friday.
➤ Some Brits confess to working on the move on a Friday afternoon, with 15% admitting to having worked from the train station, 14% from the park, and 10% from the pub, as the weekend beckons.
➤ 30% of 18–24-year-olds confess they’ve worked from the car while travelling for the weekend.
➤ 24% say they’ve often secretly left work early but kept their work status to ‘active’ on a summer Friday.
➤ 37% said they often plan to log off early on summer Fridays but typically end up working late.
➤ 25% say they often feel pressure to stay available on summer Fridays, even after the end of the working day.
➤ 64% of the Brits working a full Friday say they wish their company had a formal summer Friday policy.
Jeanie York, CTO of VMO2, said: “Our network traffic analysis is revealing changing workplace habits in real time as the nation takes advantage of long summer Fridays. We’re continuing to boost our fixed and mobile networks so whether Brits are working from their local park, or finishing their work at home, we’re ready to keep them connected.”
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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You can’t beat a POETS day!
What, you mean you’ve only just found that out? What planet do you live on?
As a remote worker, I can and sometimes do drag my laptop to a pub late Friday afternoon.
Just be careful of spillage’s, could be an expensive Friday, never mind the drink prices. 🙂
Up until the 2010s or so, you only needed to do a round of the bars and pubs in London towards the end of the week to understand that many used to clock off for the week on Thursday evening. Friday morning, the offices would be less busy with many in the pubs for the rest of the day from just before noon.
I have a hybrid job that involves me going into the office once a month for a week in business-y London.
Goes a bit like this:
Mondays: A decent few people but still quiet.
Tuesdays: As busy as it gets
Wednesday: As busy as it gets
Thursday: As busy as it gets
Friday: Ghost town
@Ben Bristow:
Yes, work patterns have changed markedly since COVID. The changes have also unfortunately led to the closure of several famous watering holes in The City.
What’s it got to do with Vermin Media? People pay them for broadband access not to comment on what VM management THINK people are doing or not doing.
I smell an overall agenda on part of VM here in favour of getting people off their network and into offices reducing their data and transit costs.
A number of large companies have flexible working where you can cram extra hours into other days and have Fridays off for example, or a Friday every other week off.
‘I smell an overall agenda on part of VM here in favour of getting people off their network and into offices reducing their data and transit costs.’
Virgin Media in common with everyone else pretty much pay for transit on 95th percentile basis, the level 95% of the transit provider’s measurements equal or fall under.
People finishing early have no impact on this at all. Evenings, big events and weekends when everyone else, not just people knocking off early, are about.
The article is about people who were in work and left early btw. They had to be in the office in the first place to leave early.
Ah my error on the article, it’s remote workers. Still doesn’t do anything for the transit costs.
@FANNY ADAMS: VMO2 has a wealth of data on their fixed and mobile networks and it would be remiss not to analyse this data to see trends and ensure that the networks can cope with fluctuating demand. You should be able to understand this.
I do. As a consumer, I’d expect them to supply broadband and not comment. After all, the other ISPs are not rushing to do such a pointless task. Other motives come to mind. Part of the anti WFH brigade when some jobs can be.
Strange to know that their newtorks analysis ‘knows’ that it is ‘work’ network traffic rather than private, and even more so when many work links are done via vpn?
➤ 61% feel they’ve earned the right to clock off early after a busy week.
Hmm, are they on contracted hours or piece rates and is this ‘earning’ different to being in office
➤ 59% say they don’t feel at all guilty about heading off early to start their weekend on Fridays.
Skiving off and again compared to ‘in office’
➤ 63% of Brits saying they feel more productive earlier in the week if they can look ahead to finishing earlier on Friday.
Weekly burn out.. or joys of getting worn down by daily grind, almosts sounds like daily work is not sustainable.
➤ Some Brits confess to working on the move on a Friday afternoon, with 15% admitting to having worked from the train station, 14% from the park, and 10% from the pub, as the weekend beckons.
Some work while being mobile any other day, not just fridays,
➤ 30% of 18–24-year-olds confess they’ve worked from the car while travelling for the weekend.
Better clarify this – hopefully just a hands free phone call, or are they tapping away on keyboards!!!
➤ 24% say they’ve often secretly left work early but kept their work status to ‘active’ on a summer Friday.
Err fraud?
➤ 37% said they often plan to log off early on summer Fridays but typically end up working late.
Didnt have to a remote worker for this to happen.
➤ 25% say they often feel pressure to stay available on summer Fridays, even after the end of the working day.
And this is just ‘remote’ working! Thats just grate ‘management’ and an abusive work culture, remote or not.
➤ 64% of the Brits working a full Friday say they wish their company had a formal summer Friday policy.
Ah, the legal right to privacy from work in the home, subjugate it or if don’t use it, you loose it. Not to mention a reflection on ‘mangement’ knowing what staff are up to, and of the mice while that cats ‘remote’. All bound in the [mutual] trust and respect from employer and employee, assuming this was done for such and not self employed / contracted services.
You have to laugh at such snippets. And I hope no ones reading this wile on the clock 😀
They didn’t say they knew what the traffic was just that traffic overall drops 8%.
Lets have a closer look at Jeanie York’s data profile seeing as she like to pass comment on the British population 🙂
My experience of O2 was that you couldn’t contemplate “working from the park” like Jeanie claims because the data throughput was nigh on bytes not megabytes……
Really? Couldn’t most people have guessed that? Did VMO2 really spend time doing this research?
Maybe if they want to log off even earlier they should try this product SpeedUpSolR
https://www.threesl.com/blog/speedupsolr-review/ apparently speed up your work during summer months allowing you to finish ahead of schedule!