Businesses see gains by joining fun
Eric Morath | / The Detroit News
Joe Saad's plan for next week's NCAA tournament games sounds more like he's outfitting a frat house than a Livonia office.
Vice president of staffing firm OtterBase, Saad intends to wheel in a big screen TV, buy pizzas and encourage staff to wear college sweat shirts and jerseys for college basketball's March Madness, which kicks off with first-round games on Thursday and Friday. Fans will find out when, where and who the teams play during the NCAA's selection show Sunday.
OtterBase is among the 23 percent of businesses that try to turn an annual workplace negative -- the massive drag on productivity caused by March Madness distractions -- into a positive event, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm. Those companies use the games, many of which are played during work hours, to strengthen the workplace team and boost morale. The annual 65-team men's college basketball tournament does indeed sap output. This year, U.S. businesses will lose an estimated $1.2 billion in productivity during the tournament, according to the Challenger report.
Losses range from extended lunch breaks and cutting out early, to workers viewing games via CBS' streaming online video, only in its second year. Watching online has the dual impact of taking workers away from their jobs and potentially slowing down company networks for everyone else.
And then there is the illegal, workplace gambling that runs rampant.
So is blocking Web sites, turning off televisions and demanding business attire next week the right move? No, says John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
"We are suggesting companies embrace the tournament," he said. "It's a ready-made event to bring the workplace together."
In a changing, transient world, where co-workers know each other for months instead of decades, such fun can help create camaraderie and boost long-term production, Challenger said.
School spirit bred festivities
OtterBase's foray into March Madness began six years ago when employees began wearing team colors to work. It's ballooned into a company-wide bracket-filling, cubical-decorating, buzzer-beater basketball watching party.
Some 50 employees will participate in the Grand Rapids-based firm's company-sponsored office pool. The winner of the OtterBase pool gets lunch and drinks paid for by losing entrants.
Saad says he's not worried that people watching games and screaming out scores will detract from work. "We're not that type of workplace," he said of the company, which places temporary workers into mostly technology and engineering jobs. "We already have a ping-pong table and bubble hockey in our office."
Like OtterBase, Pleasant Ridge-based ePrize Inc. also embraces March Madness. It is encouraging employees to watch games on their computers or work in a meeting room that will have televisions tuned to hoops and basketball decorations hanging from the walls.
"We don't think people will stop making client calls or coming to meetings because a basketball game is on," spokeswoman Alesya Opelt said. "Our employees don't need to sneak around just to watch basketball."
Bringing the game-watching and winner-picking out into the open encourages co-workers to get to know each other, and also cuts down on underground gambling and extended breaks out of the office to watch games, the experts say.
Allowing the tournament into the workplace is an acknowledgment that in a world of BlackBerries, cell phones and otherwise 24-hour access to work, employees often spend their personal time working and their work time playing a bit, Challenger said.
"There is no longer a clear cut line between work and personal life," he said. "People are working on their vacations, on their commute and after hours, but we also need to accept a personal life is now part of work time."
Access increases job issues
For companies that intend to keep March Madness out of the office, the battle is becoming more difficult.
For years, workers were relegated to sneaking a peek at March Madness games on break-room televisions or checking for score updates on the Web. Nowadays, though, they have a front row seat at their desks, with streaming video on the Web.
This year CBS, the television and online home to NCAA games, is taking it a step-further.
In its second year of offering free, online viewing at CBS.Sportsline.com, the network is expanding its bandwidth to accommodate 300,000 viewers, up from 175,000 last year.
The new larger viewer screen will also include a "boss button" that pops up a phony spreadsheet and kills the audio-feed.
Such cyber viewing may not only take a worker away from his job, it can take others from theirs.
Wide use of streaming video in most companies is not something most corporate networks were built to handle, said Scott Goemmel, executive vice president of Troy-based PMV Technologies.
"It will slow things way down and security can be a concern as it could make a network vulnerable to outside threats."
Bosses best enforce rules
While nearly a quarter of companies embrace the NCAA tournament in some way, very few -- 6 percent according the Challenger report -- take steps to curtail basketball-related activity.
Most, including Sterling Heights City Hall, limit it to the realm of water cooler banter.
"It's a topic of conversation but we don't do anything official," said Community Relations Director Steve Guitar. "It could be on the TV here, but that's normally on the government channel."
Guitar said video of the games will be blocked on city worker's computers, but all types of streaming video are prohibited.
Workplaces that do intend to crack down on tournament-related activities would be wise to ensure employees are aware of policies that limit how company networks can be used and enforce those policies uniformly, said Adam Forman, a labor and employment law attorney at Miller Canfield in Detroit.
"It's not a company's obligation to search for brackets, but if it does come to an employer's attention, they can't pick to punish Sally and not John," he said. "A policy not enforced is worse than no policy at all."
You can reach Eric Morath at (313) 222-2504 or emorath@detnews.com.