While the NCAA basketball tournament, also known as March Madness, may lead to lower productivity, some employers are allowing employees to track and discuss the tournament on company time as a way to boost morale, the Houston Chronicle reports.
This year's tournament could cost employers
as much as $1.5 billion in lost productivity, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The firm came up with that figure by using the average hourly wage and estimating the 39.3 million college-educated employees--whom the firm believes will be most likely to track the games-- will spend about 10 minutes per day following the
tournament, according to the newspaper.
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John Challenger, CEO of the outplacement firm, suggests that allowing employees to follow the tournament
may actually benefit companies because it could boost morale in the workplace. He says the tournament
can connect workers in the workplace because it can be something for everyone
to talk about, the newspaper reports.
"The workplace is filled with temps, consultants, short-tenured people
and people so disconnected that they never see each other outside of work,"
Challenger says.
Many workers participate in office pools, even though they are illegal in many
states. Most of the pools involve participants who pay a small fee to enter
the contest and then fill out brackets to predict the winners of each game in
the tournament.
Some companies are encouraging employees to participate in contests in which participants fill in brackets for the tournament, but no money ever changes hands.
The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., for example, created a contest
for its employees for this year's tournament. Employees can fill out their brackets
on the company's intranet. Employees are awarded points for each winner they
predict correctly. The top five percent of point-earners will be entered into
a random drawing for tickets to a game in next year's tournament, the company
said in a press release.
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