Let's not count the business cost of Christmas

Lots of companies and PR agencies have their Christmas hooks for products and services, and at silicon.com we're getting a fair few press releases in that vein right now. But one caught our eye today. It turns out festive emailing is a major drain on company resources, costing medium-sized businesses around £154m because of 22 million lost working hours (given certain assumptions on pay and so on).

The release makes a valid case. Its provider, Open Orchard, a company that just happens to provide web and email monitoring software, equates this loss at companies missing out on 15 per cent in extra profits. They even get a Cranfield University expert to say as much.

So why are we concerned? This is hardly in the same league as exploiting 11 September to sell business continuity services, for example, but it raises questions about Christmas, time off and the way we work.

Warning companies about cyberslacking is one thing - and even then we'd promote open web access at most companies for a whole range of benefits it brings - but cost-analysing Christmas parties and "general festive chit chat" quite another.

If anything, productivity lost to party hangovers must outweigh the sending of one or two e-cards. And if Christmas is a drain, can we have the 'man hours lost' breakdown on weekends, toilet breaks, and idle "Did you see Alan Partridge last night?" banter?

Silly? A hundred years ago many people in the UK worked what we now call weekends - much more recently in some rapidly developed countries such as South Korea - and clampdowns on toilet breaks and 'chit chat' are still a feature of our more draconian call centres.

Let's make sure people do their jobs, but there is still a place for some downtime - and Santa.