IT Systems Failures Cost Businesses 127 Million Lost Person-Hours

Businesses collectively lose more than 127 million person-hours annually—or an average of 545 person-hours per company—in employee productivity due to IT downtime, according to a survey sponsored by CA Technologies. This loss is equivalent to 63,500 people being unable to work for an entire year.

The survey of 2,000 organisations in North America and Europe also found that IT outages are frequent and lengthy—substantially damaging companies’ reputations, staff morale and customer loyalty. Despite this, 56% of organisations in North America and 30% in Europe don’t have a formal and comprehensive disaster recovery policy.

Other key findings:

Each business suffers an average of 14 hours of downtime per year, during which employees are only able to work at 63% of their usual productivity.

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After systems are back up and running, organisations lose an average of nine additional hours per year to the time it takes to recover data. During these times, employee productivity only climbs to 70%.

50% of organisations said IT outages damage their reputation. 18% described the impact on their reputation as “very damaging.”

44% of respondents believe IT downtime damages staff morale, and 35% said it can adversely impact customer loyalty.

87% of businesses indicated that failure to recover data would be damaging to the business. 23% said this would be “disastrous.”

CA Technologies believes that organisations can avoid productivity losses by improving their data protection strategies and accelerating data recovery.

“There are a variety of practical and affordable steps organisations can take to protect themselves against the adverse business impact of IT outages,” said Steve Fairbanks, vice president of product management, Data Management, CA Technologies. “Given that these outages are a fact of life—and that some of the consequences of outages can be irreversible—investments in improved business continuity are extremely worthwhile.”