Red cards, late starts & lost hours: World Cup workforce survival
It’s that time of year again – the World Cup is upon us, bringing excitement and camaraderie for many, and for employers, a few potential challenges. As the UK embraces its love of big sporting events, organisations can notice a shift in employee focus. Managing attendance effectively during this period is key to maintaining productivity while fostering team spirit. With the right approach, you can strike a balance that keeps the workplace running smoothly while allowing employees to enjoy the festivities.
The good news for employers is that for the entire duration of the current World Cup (which goes on until 19 July), not one of the 104 games will take place during the standard UK 9-5 working day, although a handful do start at 5pm. This means that employers are not going to have to think about dealing with requests for televisions in the office or employees disappearing to the pub during the day. The main challenge this time is dealing with tired employees.
Full disclosure – I am a football fan and follow England, even though there are inexplicably no Liverpool players in the team. What that means for me, and I imagine hundreds of thousands of other fans for this World Cup, given the time difference for the games, is trying to work out sleep schedules. This is a challenge – the England group games mainly kick off at 9pm UK time, but it’s not as much of a challenge as Scotland fans whose next two games kick off at 11pm or fans of Columbia or Uzbekistan whose game kicks off at 3am UK time.
The impact for organisations is very real. Research suggests that over a quarter of UK employees may arrive late, leave early, or miss work altogether during the tournament. Others may turn up tired, hungover, or distracted by match highlights, potentially costing businesses millions in lost productivity.
What’s the best practice here?
It’s probably best not to try to strictly enforce policies and instead focus on proactive planning and flexibility. If you are inflexible that may mean employees calling in sick or taking unapproved leave. Consider having conversations about time-off requests and flexible start times which can help manage staffing shortages more effectively and help you plan. For frontline workers, where operational demands cannot be postponed, offering incentives for less desirable shifts or enabling alternative scheduling can ease pressure.
Of course, it’s not just England fans you may need to consider requests from. I have already mentioned the next couple of Scotland games, and with there being 48 teams in this World Cup, which is the biggest ever number by some way, the chances are that you will have supporters across a wide number of teams within your workforce.
Whatever approach you take, offering some flexibility may help win some trust and engagement from your employees – so some potential longer terms benefits for a relatively short term adjustment.
The World Cup’s predictable schedule does at least allow organisations to plan ahead. Line managers and HR teams should spend some time identifying staffing pressure points early, communicate policies clearly, and prepare for real-time adjustments both on match days as well as the day after.
Important to remember that not all colleagues will be football fans so equally critical to consider how you might deal with requests for flexibility across your workforce during this time, to avoid claims of showing more favourable treatment to football fans.
