Would you trade vacation time for working technology? Almost a third of employers say they would.
The worst notion of Man versus Robot might just be coming true, at least at the workplace. Small business owners prefer a sick, sniffling employee to call in absent from work than to face a computer’s blank screen from a computer crash.
About 75% of small business owners found crashed computers to be more disruptive to business than a sick employee, and 77% reported that malfunctions caused them to lose out on opportunities or miss deadlines, thus negatively impacting their business.
A company’s productivity to technology comes hand in hand: 86% mentioned that these technological breakdowns caused productivity losses at some point in the business. Small businesses take a major hit from this especially, considering how 31% of respondents are willing to trade in a week’s worth of vacation to prevent any technological mishaps.
Despite this anxiety, technology-related investments are still relatively important as a business investment, with about 51% of respondents citing technology tool-related capital investments such as new software, mobile apps and cloud computing services as their priority.
The Brother SBO 2013 Survey was conducted by Wakefield Research among 500 U.S. small business owners of companies with less than 100 employees, between 21st February 2013 to 4th March 2013, using an email invitation and online survey.
