March Madness: No Kidding, A Shocking Statistic on Lost Productivity in the Workplace

I am not a big sports fan. Let me rephrase that: I don't watch or listen to a lot of sports in comparison with a lot of men. I read in the Friday, Honolulu Star Bulletin an interesting statistic: Corporate America is likely to lose $1.2 billion in productivity during the NCAA basketball tournament. The full article is to be published in the Sunday Star Bulletin edition. If you would like to know the source of this information, I found it comes from Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc. which is a based in Chicago. Click here to read the full report.

I wonder how this compares with productivity loss on the Monday after the NFL Superbowl? According to one source (CNBC), the loss productivity in the work place related to the Superbowl is around $800 million. That was spread out over the entire month of January. Again, the CNBC data comes from Challenger, Gray, and Christmas, Inc.

Are there other large sporting events that impact work productivity like this? I would imagine the larger dollar loss for the NCAA tournament is based on the number of days involved versus the Superbowl being just one day, and a Sunday at that. Many of the NCAA games are played during the week, during regular, business hours.

Is your company doing anything to monitor or limit loss productivity? With the ability to follow most events via the web these days, are IT departments putting in place any filters? I know there have been companies that block access to sports web sites. How prevalent is that though?

I'd love to hear comments from anyone who is familiar with or has stories about loss productivity in the workplace related to sporting events. I'll say this, if the productivity lost at work during the NCAA tournament is anywhere close to these estimates, that is truly March Madness.

Comments

[Helen]

Companies should acknowledge this kind loss in their business. A more secure workplace could prevent this sort of incident. And they should punish severely those who try to escape and watch the game. With this, maybe games will be played during weekends to prevent further loss.

[Bob]

Thanks for commenting Helen. There is a fine line between trusting our employees and treating them like adults versus running our organizations like a prison. There are no easy answers--we live in a fast-paced media and information based time.

[Irene]

They can't blame the game. People are just sports fans and just want to enjoy the things they like. Companies should hire more women in their companies if they don't want those kinds of loss.