Staff skip work for Christmas shopping

More than one third of employees are planning on calling in sick to work in order to get their Christmas shopping done.

But Britain’s ‘Santa sickies’ could cost the country around £161 million (S$331m) in lost productivity, as employees try to avoid the weekend shopping crowds.

A further 21% say they plan to call in sick so they can shop in peace while their children are at school, Daily Mail reported.

According to new research conducted in the UK, one fifth of Brits (22%) believe it’s acceptable to do this.

Busy senior professionals with a jam-packed work and social calendar leading up to the end of the year are most likely to be work truants in favour of shopping.

“It can sometimes seem impossible to fit in Christmas shopping on top of everything else that’s going on at this time of the year,” said Anita Naik, a spokesperson for VoucherCodes.co.uk who commissioned the research.