March Madness is taking over at small companies that are letting employees watch the NCAA basketball tournament while they work, The Associated Press reports.
Staffers at the marketing company Phelps will be able to keep an eye on the games at their desks or on conference room TVs. CEO Joe Phelps says his 86 employees are hard workers, often staying late or completing projects on weekends, so he’s fine if they work a little less hard during when games are on during office hours.
“If you hire the right people in the beginning who are motivated and productive, then we’re past the time of measuring and having everyone with their nose to the grindstone all the time,” says Phelps, whose company is based in Playa Vista, California.
March Madness can be a distraction at many companies, especially during daytime games. The games are streamed online, and many people continually check scores on their smartphones.
Productivity can slip, with an estimated $1.9 billion in wages paid to staffers who aren’t working because they’re preoccupied with games, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a company that helps laid-off people find jobs. And if everyone’s watching a game at the same time, it can slow a company’s computer network.
But many small businesses have found it’s better to let staffers watch the games, and that output doesn’t really suffer. They find that a little slack makes for a better workplace. And because the decision will likely be made by the owner, and not layers of executives as in a big corporation, the boss can just say go for it.
Many workers are interested because they’re part of pools that bet on the games. The American Gaming Association, an industry group, estimates that 40 million people complete 70 million brackets, the printed or online forms fans fill in, predicting which teams will win at every level of the tournament. The more accurate fans’ predictions are, the more likely they’ll win money if they’re participating in a pool.
Owners who want to forbid employees to watch games even on their phones are going to have a hard time enforcing an outright ban, says Eric Cormier, a human resources specialist with Insperity, a Houston-based company that provides HR services.
