Business leaders and senior executives spend an average 108 minutes consuming business-related content each week
A study of over 500 CEOs and managing directors has found that organisational leaders in the UK spend an average 21.6 minutes per day (108 minutes per week) reading, watching or listening to business-related content in the form of articles, podcasts, newsletters, or video content.
This is marginally lower than the total time spent reading books by Britons each day, which stands at 27.7 minutes according to figures published this week by the Office for National Statistics.
The research, conducted by Clearly PR who specialise in developing thought leadership content for businesses in the UK and US, also showed that the amount of time spent consuming content varies depending on the size of the business a leader presides over.
Accordingly, for organisations with 500 or more employees, leaders typically spend 133 minutes each week reading, watching or listening to business-related content.
This number dips slightly to 117 minutes in organisations with between 240-499 and again to 74 minutes per week for those employing between 50-249 people.
Leaders of businesses whose workforces number below 50 people were found to spend just 37 minutes per week, with one in three (35%) admitting to never consuming any content at all. By comparison, this figure stood at just 5% for those running businesses with 50-249 employees and 1% of leaders at 250+ sized organisations.
Differences in the amount of business-related content consumed also varied between the sexes. The research revealed that female business leaders and executives spend an average of 22 minutes more than men each week engaging in such content.
One possible explanation for this could be the differences in how much more ‘engaged’ women are than men. The data showed that one in three (31%) male leaders are likely to find the content they’re exposed to as ‘boring’ compared to just 25% of female leaders.
Commenting on the research findings, Paul MacKenzie-Cummins, founder and managing director at Clearly PR, said: “The pandemic has seen business leaders and key decision makers grapple with an ever-changing set of new and often-complex challenges.
“To gain a greater understanding of what is happening and find the answers they need to help them make better informed decisions, business leaders are increasingly seeking the insights and expertise of their peers in the form of thought leadership content.
“The more complex things become as we transition from a state of lockdown into a relatively uncertain post-pandemic life, the greater need there is to access information from those we consider to be ‘experts’.
“In fact, our study found that 59% of CEOs and managing directors in the UK believe that accessing sound business-related content will become more important in the coming months.”
“Of particular note to us is the finding that female leaders consume around a quarter more thought leadership than their male colleagues. It follows that as women are accessing and processing more business-related content, they have a greater breadth of valuable insights that can be drawn upon.
“We’re not positing that women make ‘better’ leaders than men simply because they clearly possess more information – that would be over-simplifying things. Rather, it should be a consideration for those organisations who have yet to achieve greater female representation on their Boards.”
