The four biggest staff challenges during major sporting events (and how to tackle them)

Whether it’s Wimbledon or the World Cup, your staff may be gearing up to watch the latest big game as we speak. And you know what that means…

It’s time to get your policies and procedures in order.

Because while your employees might be enjoying getting into the sporting spirit, it’s important to remind them not to get too carried away. Otherwise, you might find your company goals taking a backseat to the ones on the pitch…

That’s why it’s important to send out a strong HR reminder to your staff now to avoid conduct and performance issues down the line. And we’re here to help. But first, let’s look at how to tackle some of the major issues you could be facing…

1.      Conflicting holiday requests

Around the time of major sporting events, you might have more annual leave requests than usual from staff who want to enjoy the games.

So, it’s important to handle these requests in the right way. If everyone wants time off to watch the events, you need to make sure you still have enough staff in work. And unfortunately, that means you can’t please everyone…

If you have multiple employees wanting time off at the same time, you should follow your usual process for handling holiday requests (which you should outline in your holiday policy). If you would normally use a first-come-first service approach for example, apply the same rules. It doesn’t matter which approach you take as long as you’re fair and consistent.

When you have written rules, your employees know how much notice they need to give when putting in requests and the reasons why you might have to reject a request. This helps to manage their expectations and makes it less likely they’ll raise grievances if that does happen.

To allow employees who can’t take holiday to have the best of both worlds, you could consider offering temporary flexible working arrangements if you don’t already and you’re able to. This might mean allowing your employees to adjust their start and finish times, work from home, or have a longer lunch break to watch the games.

Because if your employees have a more flexible working arrangement they can fit around the events, they might be less compelled to want the time off.

2.      Sickness and unauthorised absences

While you may be able to control holiday absences, you might find it harder to keep a lid on sickness and unauthorised absences.

And if your employees are really wanting to watch the events and you don’t lay down the law in advance, you could be dealing with problematic absenteeism.

Let’s say you reject your employee’s holiday request, and they don’t turn up and give you a valid reason for the absence on the day. In this case, their absence would be unauthorised and you may want to consider taking disciplinary action.

Likewise, if you reject your employee’s holiday request and they call in sick that day, you might have reason to believe their sickness isn’t genuine. This is tricky ground to take because your employees have a right to take sick leave and you shouldn’t ever jump to conclusions.

However, if you have a reasonable belief that your employee might be lying about sickness, you are within your rights to carry out a full investigation.

You can help deter absences by making sure you have a robust sickness and absence policy.

Your staff might not take being absent so lightly when you can demonstrate you have a process in place to deal with absences – like holding return to work interviews.

And if you do find yourself tackling absenteeism, it’s easier and quicker to deal with when you have absence management software. Software allows you to monitor who’s in work and who’s not and will flag up any unusual patterns. This helps you both manage your workplace capacity and tells you when you might need to bring up an attendance issue with your employee.

3.      Misconduct

It’s one thing your employees being absent from work - but if they’re turning up in an unfit state, they might as well not be there at all. 

That’s when you may have misconduct issues on your hands.

If you’re concerned about employee conduct slipping, it’s important to remind your staff that you expect a certain standard of behaviour and performance, regardless of whether there’s a sporting event on.

You should outline this standard of behaviour in your employee handbook. For example, it’s reasonable to expect your employees to be ready and available for work on time.

So, gently remind your employees that if they fall short of this standard, you will take disciplinary action.

You might want to stress that you won’t tolerate employees turning up for work while under the influence of alcohol or suffering the after-effects of alcohol from the night before. Because while what your employees do on their own time is not your issue, it becomes your issue if it means they underperform or act inappropriately on work time.

So, firmly establish from the get-go that there will be consequences for any cases of misconduct.

4.      Low productivity

Even if your employee’s behaviour isn’t anything untoward, distracted employees are still problematic.

Because if your employees are constantly using the internet at work to check the scores or talk with colleagues about the games, you might see their productivity start to dip.

So, it’s important to make sure your employees are at their best to perform and focus on work tasks.

It sounds counterproductive but one way you might be able to help with this is by considering screening events at your workplace.

Allowing employees to watch the events at work either on big screens or on their own screens could be a great opportunity for team building. Plus, it helps you control how much time they’re actually spending watching and thinking about the events. And allowing them to watch with limitations might actually keep them more productive than trying to block them from the events altogether.

For example, you could set rules on how long your staff are allowed to watch the events and whether they need to make up time afterwards. You can also remind staff of your internet usage policy if you’re making an exception for them to use the work internet for personal use.

Download your free sample sporting events policy

You don’t have to be a bad sport and damage employee relations to prevent conduct issues. You just need to set boundaries.

Because when you take steps to mitigate any potential HR risks in advance, you help make sure your business continues to run smoothly - while allowing your staff to have their fun too.

The best way to set boundaries is to have a specific sporting events policy. And to help you out, we’re giving you a free policy sample you can use as a template to create your own.

Crafted by legal experts, click here to download your free sporting policy sample. So, you can create firm but fair guidelines around watching the big game at work.