Count on Bob Lacy to be one of those business leaders who won’t be trying to calculate the hours his employees spend away from their work as they track their brackets or sneak a peek at the March Madness action on their computer, smartphone or tablet.
“It’s fun to do and it’s a good thing for the culture,” Lacy says, referring to activities such as bracket wagers, Super Bowl squares and fantasy sports.
“It’s just another form of camaraderie. Nobody is forced to participate. Much like our run club or the company employee lunch we do every month or our sporadic happy hours, those things are all good for morale and for encouraging employee communication.”
Lacy, who is vice president of operations at InStep Software, says he has no concern that his employees can have a little fun without skipping a beat in their job responsibilities.
“I think it causes people to be more productive because they don’t want to let their co-workers down,” Lacy says. “There is an awful lot of camaraderie and respect for each other that comes out of working and playing together. It increases communication and collaboration and ultimately, I’m willing to bet the productivity is higher. So the customer experience is also very good as a result.”
A popular pursuit
If you take the time to crunch the numbers of the people who participate in these kinds of sports-related contests, the results are often staggering at first glance. At the beginning of the 2013 football season, Chicago-based Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. released a report that estimated the cost of fantasy football to corporate America at $8.3 billion.
That figure was reached by taking the estimated 23 million people who play fantasy football and multiplying it times the average hourly wage for a non-farm, private-sector employee, which at the time was $23.98. Multiply that by the 15 weeks of the fantasy football season and you get $8.3 billion.
The findings are “total conjecture,” points out John A. Challenger, CEO at the outplacement consulting firm, since no one knows exactly who is and isn’t playing fantasy football or how much those who do earn for their work.
And while he adds that a company’s Internet bandwidth could be affected as fantasy players monitor their teams, leaders who seek to ban such pursuits in their companies do so at their own peril.
“An across-the-board ban on all fantasy football or sports websites is likely to backfire and cause a drop in morale, loyalty and ironically, productivity,” Challenger says in the report. “The end result could be far worse than any loss of productivity caused by 10 to 20 minutes of team management each day.”
Another thing leaders should keep in mind is the fact that few, if any employees are capable of spending every minute at the office completely focused on their work.
“Employees will talk about things like the Super Bowl or March Madness or the presidential election,” says Michael Gibbs, a clinical professor of economics and faculty director of the Executive MBA program at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
“But if they are not talking about March Madness, they are probably going to be talking about something else to some extent. If anything, having something fun or positive for people to be thinking and talking about may be a nice thing during times of pressure.”
Tough to measure productivity
Gibbs, who studies the economics of human resources and organizational design, says it’s fairly easy to measure productivity at a macro level, but notes that it becomes more difficult when you narrow your focus.
“Companies spend an enormous amount of time and hire more managers than they otherwise would just because of the difficulty of evaluating performance,” Gibbs says. “Part of that is a lot of performance is intangible. A lot of what employees do, you just can’t observe while they are doing it. You can’t look at their inputs. You have to try to figure out what their outputs are. When they are intangible, that’s difficult.”
Technology is helping companies break down some of those barriers and giving rise to workplace analytics. But Gibbs is skeptical of any leader who sees college basketball, fantasy football or Super Bowl squares as key factors in his or her company’s failure to reach its goals.
“As far as I know, there is no academic study of this kind of thing,” Gibbs says. “I’m skeptical that there is any real loss in productivity. I think it’s pretty harmless.”
Gibbs also points out that these kinds of extracurricular activities are not unique to the United States.
“I teach students all over the world, and I have to tell you, the same thing happens in London and Singapore,” Gibbs says. “European executives and employees are always talking about the soccer games or the World Cup. This is not a U.S. phenomenon at all. In fact, in Europe, I think they talk about soccer more than we talk about sports here.”
Get some fresh air
As Lacy looks at the employee turnover rate at InStep, he sees it coming down every year. He gives much of the credit to that progress to the software company’s workplace culture that focuses on more than just watching sports.
The company’s running club came together to participate in some of Chicago’s charity races that are held throughout the year, including the J.P. Morgan Corporate Challenge and the Chicago Blackhawks’ Mad Dash to Madison.
“People that are going to participate in those events prepare ahead of time, so that contributes to their physical health being a little better than it would be otherwise just by getting ready,” Lacy says. “They add to the social nature of the workplace. People can argue that there are some inefficiencies that come from it. But I would say the camaraderie and satisfaction with being part of the team increases as a result of these activities.” ●
Learn more about University of Chicago Booth School of Business at:
Twitter: @ChicagoBooth
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/chicagoboothbusiness
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/user/ChicagoBoothMBA
Learn more about Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. at:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChallengerGray
Twitter: @ChallengerGray
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/company/28264?trk=tyah
How to reach: University of Chicago Booth School of Business, www.chicagobooth.edu; InStep Software LLC, www.instepsoftware.com; Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc., www.challengergray.com
