Absences soar by 800 percent after Champions League final

Record numbers of people called into work sick this morning following Manchester United’s defeat in the Champion’s League Final.

alldayPA, which operates an outsourced 2- hour absence line for thousands of UK businesses, said it received eight times as many absence calls as they would on an average Thursday. The company said the spike was most acute in the North West area where the volume of absence calls was up almost ten fold.

Gemma Harding, alldayPA’s communications manager, said: “We often see absences peak on Fridays and Mondays or the Tuesday after a bank holiday, particularly when the weather has been good, but it’s unusual to see a spike like this on a Thursday.” She continued: “An unusually high volume of calls have been coming in since 6am this morning. The only factor we can attribute it to is the fact that many football fans would have been out watching last night’s football match and perhaps stayed up commiserating. The fact that the number of calls was higher in the north west-based companies would seem to support this theory.”

The 24 hour absence line enables HR departments to effectively manage staff numbers and provides a report detailing absence numbers before the start of business. alldayPA employs 130 staff at its Salford-based call centre in addition to staff in Cambridge and Surrey.

Gemma added: “Being based in the north west, we have a few sore heads among our own staff today, but thankfully everyone has turned into work as it’s all hands on deck dealing with the absence line this morning.”

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