March Madness in the Workplace: A Safe Bet for Businesses?

Along with the 2015 NCAA men’s basketball tournament comes the chaotic tradition of placing bets on teams and fueling rivalries with colleagues.

According to Jim Fessenden, partner at Fisher & Phillips in San Diego, employers may be better off embracing some aspects of March Madness rather than trying to ban any trace of it in the workplace. Fisher & Phillips is one of the largest U.S. law firms to concentrate its practice exclusively on labor and employment matters.

Fessenden offers three tips for employers gearing up for March Madness:

1. Be realistic. Nothing signals the start of March Madness more than the multitude of stories about businesses losing productivity to America’s most watched college sporting event. It’s inevitable that employees will spend time following the 63-game event. So what’s an employer to do? One option is to insist on an all-out ban of employees watching or following March Madness. Good luck. It’s 2015. Every employee with a cell phone can follow March Madness while on work time. And whether right or wrong, many employees are going to be checking for updates and information during office hours. The reality is that you’re not going to catch all of them.

2. Embrace the silver lining. Since March Madness is so pervasive – both in the workplace and everywhere else – employers might as well focus on the benefits of it rather than trying to police their employees. In other words, consider containing March Madness, rather than banning it altogether. Allow employees to watch games during their lunch breaks or have a supervisor update a large-size bracket visible to employees. Relax the dress code and let employees wear their team shirts for a day or two. Let it slide if employees are checking scores on their cell phones. Employers can even sponsor a pool, distribute brackets and publish employee rankings once a week. The truth is that sports can be a great bonding tool, and you might as well take advantage of it. Giving some leeway may be less disruptive than trying to enforce an all-out ban. Hopefully, a little leeway will improve morale and employee relations. One step employers should avoid, however, is hosting a monetary pool. Monetary pools may amount to illegal gambling.

3. Enforce your limitations. Enforce the limitations you do have, and stand by them. Just be sure that you are enforcing those limitations fairly and consistently against all employees.