Purpose

The purpose of this case is to have students consider how much non-work activity should be allowed in the workplace.

1.Do you think non-work activities, like games, parties, or social outings, help or hurt productivity at work? Why?

Ready for Football?

The CEO of your advertising firm recently put together your team, made up of managers, employees, and even interns, to solve a thorny issuesports. Almost every Friday and Monday, she has noticed many employees at their desks, looking at their monitors quite intently. At first, she wanted to praise them for working so hard, but on closer inspection, she found that their attention was fixed on fantasy football. These folks, dozens of them all over the office, weren't analyzing company data or working on new sales leads. Instead, they were looking for players to add to their fantasy teams or emailing other people in their league about making a trade.

Needless to say, the CEO was quite disheartened to see how preoccupied everyone was with sports. So she assigned your team the task of putting together an office policy on this issue.

At first glance, the solution seems simple enoughjust prohibit employees from playing fantasy sports during work hours. After all, whatever amount of time employees spend on playing or watching games is that much time they spend not working. A study by the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas showed that lost productivity costs American companies around $1.5 billion during a football season.

But then again, perhaps the answer is not that simple. Another survey by Challenger, Gray & Christmas shows that fantasy football has little actual impact on productivity. In their survey, 100 human resources officers were asked to rate how big of a distraction fantasy football was on a scale of 1 to 10. The average response was just 3.42. What is more, an office-wide fantasy football league might actually help motivate workers. Letting employees indulge in a fantasy league may actually give them a mental break so that they are even more productive when their attention turns back to work. John Challenger argues that a company that allows employees to participate in fantasy football is likely to see long benefits in morale, productivity, and employee retention.

2. So the question that your team faces is this: What do we do with fantasy sports? Should you keep letting employees partake of fantasy leagues during work hours, even though it's often frustrating to see workers do everything else but work?

3. But if you prohibit fantasy sports leagues at work, do you really think that employees will spend their newly found time doing work, or will they just find another distraction?

4. And if you do prohibit fantasy sports leagues, how would you deal with the negative response from employees?

5. Do you think that allowing employees to play in fantasy leagues at work is a good motivational tool? Why, or why not?

6.What would be an effective method to have employees stop playing fantasy games without destroying their morale or motivation?