March Madness: Office distraction or morale builder?

For accounting firm Tofias, college basketball’s March Madness offers a relief of sorts from a March madness of a different kind – tax season.
There’s the early morning check of NCAA Tournament scores and brackets before getting quickly down to work. Then, during breaks, there’s the water-cooler talk about the games and how picks are holding up.
“We’re stressed out, so it’s always good to have a little levity in the office,” explained Grafton “Cap” Willey, who works out of Tofias’ Providence office.
But the basketball talk doesn’t last long, with April 15 looming. “We’re very busy right now,” Willey said.
Apparently, others aren’t so busy – at least not with the work they get paid to do.
Consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. recently estimated that the workplace distraction that the NCAA Tournament causes costs employers nationwide as much as $1.7 billion in lost productivity over the 16 business days of March Madness from March 17, after the teams and brackets are announced, to the final game on April 7.
That estimate is based on the number of people expected to take part in an office pool – as many as 37.3 million people, according to Challenger – and the amount of work time spent on tournament-related activities, such as watching the games themselves during business hours.
A survey conducted by Vault.com, a career Web site, said that 68 percent of the respondents said they will spend five to 10 minutes a day making picks for the office pool and checking on them later.
The loss of productivity is compounded by the Internet, which can be used to research picks, monitor brackets, and even watch the games.
Challenger said an additional issue is the slowing effect that watching the games online could have on a company’s computer network.
At local companies, excitement over the NCAA Tournament doesn’t appear to have exactly reached madness levels, said John Gregory, president and CEO of the Northern Rhode Island Chamber of Commerce.
He figures it’s because both the University of Rhode Island and Providence College weren’t invited this year. URI qualified for the National Invitation Tournament, but who has an NIT office pool?
Also possibly playing a factor: With the Patriots fresh off a historic season, and the Red Sox about to start a new year as defending World Series champions, it might be hard to drum up interest in the NCAA Tournament.
Laura Pedrick, marketing director at the Providence law firm Partridge Snow & Hahn LLP, said numerous staff members came in wearing Patriots garb leading up to the Super Bowl. It definitely has not been the same for the basketball tournament.
Last week Pedrick said she hasn’t heard a word about March Madness in the office, only on the car radio during her morning commute.
But for companies where employees are running pools and jokingly trash-talking about their picks, Bryant University management professor Michael Roberto sees it as a positive.
“Clearly, it does take up a little more time than it should,” Roberto said last week. “But it’s probably just displacing things that they’d be doing otherwise – e-mail, surfing the Internet.”
For that reason, Roberto believes the Challenger calculations overestimate time lost to NCAA Tournament distractions. He said the report didn’t address that many workers waste time doing other things.
And Roberto added, many people take their work home with them, something else not accounted for by Challenger.
Another positive: Creating bonds between employees. “There’s certainly a camaraderie built, and networking opportunities that may be useful in work later on,” Roberto said.
Morale building or not, organizing a pool is technically illegal in the state.
While it’s not against the law to place a bet, it is to accept one, according to Michael Healey, spokesman for the R.I. attorney general’s office. At the same time, he acknowledged that it’s not exactly a top priority of law enforcement.
Does the AG’s office have an NCAA Tournament pool?
Yes, Healey said, but there’s no money involved. “It’s literally for office bragging rights,” he said. •