U.S. Senate could vote as early as Saturday on whether to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. This weekend vote might save businesses big bucks. The decision has transfixed the nation and might have already cost employers billions.
HR consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas typically calculates the productivity costs of top sporting events like the NCAA tournament. Now, as workers have been consumed with the controversial confirmation hearings, the firm considered how this important historical moment is impacting workers and businesses.
It estimates that approximately 70 million people watched or read about the September 27 hearing on their work computers, cell phones and televisions. Some spent nearly 2 to 3 hours of their work day last week focused on the testimony, it said, leading to a loss of nearly $1.8 billion per hour as workers followed the news.
Since then, as employees have debated the case or refreshed their browsers for updates, the total loss to employers has grown to a total of $8.8 billion, according to the firm. It also expects that workers will spend one to two hours focusing on today’s cloture motion and other news in advance of the final vote.
The firm’s calculation is based, in part, on an average hourly wage of $25.39 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the assumption that only around 80 percent of workers are at their jobs on any given weekday.
It also factors in the number of workers who use the internet at work — more than 90 million, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration — and other data on the share of workers who use the internet at work and are interested in politics.
Nielsen data finds that viewership of the Kavanaugh hearing was at its strongest between 3:15 p.m. and 6:45 p.m. ET. This excludes online viewers, people following Twitter and online news coverage, or those who listened to livestreams at work.
The impact of this productivity loss won’t hit employers right away. “They won’t see this showing up in the bottom line at the end of the month,” Andrew Challenger, vice president of the HR firm, tells CNBC Make It. Employers are more likely to see delays and slowdowns in work.
The firm also looked at the Nielsen ratings for the Anita Hill hearing in October 1991, when Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. That hearing also consumed the country and 20 million households that tuned in.
“The type of coverage that got, before the internet, gives you a sense of how many people are paying attention,” Challenger says. “It wouldn’t be surprising to see something similar today.”
Challenger suggests managers resist encouraging debate about the issue but be sensitive about how their staff is handling it. “They should understand that this is a major inflection point in the course of our country’s history, so it makes sense that employees are paying attention.”
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