Employers Brace for a Drop in Productivity as Fans Revel in their Favorite Sporting Events

According to a recent study conducted by Challenger, Gray and Christmas, Inc, the 2008 NCAA Championships could see offices in the United States losing “as much as $1.7 billion in wasted work time over the 16 business days of the Tournament” caused by employees participating in fantasy pools and some even watching the games online.

According to a report in the Calgary Herald, over 500 City of Calgary employees were issued letters of reprimand over a 13-month period, spanning 2006-2007, for visiting websites involving gambling and explicit adult content. This report showed that if an organization blocks gambling sites in an attempt to decrease productivity loss from sports betting, other personal online use can occur while the employee is on the clock. "Doing travel reservations, planning reservations and chatting with friends on Facebook—they may not be inappropriate (sites), but they also are a much bigger productivity-killer than inappropriate sites," said Raj Narayanaswamy, co-CEO of Replicon Inc. Implementing a time and expense tracking solution, such as Replicon’s Web TimeSheet, is a good way to thwart employee time-wasting online.

Using Web TimeSheet, workers account for their time by tracking it in real-time from anywhere with an Internet connection. Web TimeSheet was designed to complement various cyber logging systems, allowing employers to integrate data logs to track any discrepancies as well as avoid misuse of the Internet. Along with an instituted Acceptable Internet Use Policy, Web TimeSheet helps in avoiding productivity loss as it requires employees to report the time spent on certain tasks while making them aware that the information is monitored by their employer.