World Cup Office

The Register and OUT-LAW.com have published five essential tips for companies during the World Cup 2006 campaign in Germany this summer.

Most of them are obviously heavily aimed at middle-managers worried all their staff will piss off for the day or come in with a hangover - none really aimed (until the last one) at managers interested in building morale and gaining respect.

First I’ll give you their five headings and then I’ll go into detail afterwards. The five headlines are: holiday bookings, flexitime, drink problems, managing sickies and be realistic.

OK so lets start with holiday bookings. Basically what they’re saying here is that managers need to be firm with their staff and tell them that although they are entitled to holiday but that companies have the right to tell them when they can/can’t take it.

The other area of flexitime and managing sickies are along a similar line - it basically says keep an eye on people taking excessive time off but make sure you don’t accuse anyone or you might get in trouble - it also says bewary of genre sterotyping.

The flexitime thing suggests that you give people the chance to finish early or start late depending on the job which is actually something that should be available by default anyway.

Drinking problems speaks for itself, in it Out Law are basically suggestion that heavy punishments should be in place for any staff at work drunk.

The last one as I’ve already mentioned is, in my own opinion the most logically and in fact best option of the lot - putting a screen up in the office showing the football.

For the last world cup I was working for an IT company in Jersey, instead of insisting staff work through the match or try and battle leave/sickness they turned one of their training suites into a tv room.

They pulled down the big projection screen and played out the football on a big screen, blinds closed and chairs out - they even had drinks (non alchoholic) on tap for people watching the game.

Productivity was actually up during the world cup because the company trusted their staff and gave them a means to watch the match without actually being away from work.

By doing this people stay at their desk until 10 minutes before and go back to their desks just after the match.

So instead of having staff taking a whole day off sick to watch a match for an hour and a half you have them taking an hour and a half out and then being more productive when they go back because they’re happy with you.

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