Will the summer of sport affect your workplace?

Keri Allan

12 months ago 0 Comments

I recently came across an intriguing report that stated that 2012’s “summer of sport” looks set to cause conflict between HR and IT executives.

Research undertaken by Robert Half Technology showed that over 40 per cent of UK and European HR directors believe Olympic and/or Euro-2012 football activities, such as watching game footage from PCs or engaging in friendly competitions in the office, will have a positive impact on employee morale.

However, almost 60 per cent of UK and European IT executives have stated that they will not allow employees to view sports coverage from their computers at work. Concerned by the potential impact that viewing major sporting events have on business infrastructure and operations, they’ve explained their main reasons come down to productivity, security and network capacity issues. With the Olympics in mind, some organisations have even gone to the extent of providing televisions at work, so that their staff are not tempted to tune in to the action from their PCs, with the cumulative effect on bandwidth.

I’d love to find out your thoughts on this impasse – are you having similar discussions in your workplace? Perhaps you’ve already listened to a Euro 2012 match or two via Internet radio at work? You may even be like me and be trying to escape the sport frenzy that seems to have taken over of late!

It's an interesting argument that seems to have strong points on each side, though. Could workplace screenings of matches improve colleague relationships, or will the events simply lead to network and productivity problems? Please do share your sport vs work stories over the next few months here: it’ll be interesting to see how things actually do play out…

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