When football-mad employees go missing

Singapore – Despite football-mad employees calling in sick on Thursday after a crucial European football match ended at 6am earlier, HR practitioners and HR vendors say work productivity was not affected.

However there are some concerns that this similar scenario may affect work productivity in future as the recently concluded Champions’ League final resulted in many fans taking sick leave or trudging into work half-dead yesterday.

With the upcoming Euro 2008 tournament in June, this might be bad news for companies who employ football enthusiasts.

Annie Yap, CEO of The GMP Group, says companies who have a large group of football fans can adopt a flexible and open approach instead of restricting access to football.

“In firms where there is a firm football fanbase, some bosses might use this opportunity of allowing employees to come in later the following day,” Yap says. “Or work out flexible arrangements such as staggered work hours or telecommuting as a motivational tool.”

Companies can also readjust their HR policies by updating annual leave policies for employees to take time off during sporting events or inflating sales targets during that period.

Yap says, “Should employees fail to perform on increased targets, they would have at least met their usual quotas.”

For employees who intend to take bogus sick leave during the Euro 2008, Yap advises employees to be upfront with their intention to take leave so managers would be able to coordinate manpower and workload.

She suggests getting non-enthusiasts to put in extra hours.

"Compensate them either financially or give them a day off on a day of their choice,” Yap says.

Yet not all companies suffered from the football fever. Hong Siu Ming, HR manager of Great Eastern Life Assurance says there was no visible increase in the amount of sick leave taken yesterday.

However it could also be due to the organisational demographics.

Hong says, “Fortunately, we do not have this problem. Our population has a relatively higher percentage of females compared to males.”

As their products are intangible and distributed via the banks and agencies, Hong adds, “More likely, any dip would be due to seasonal factors which are industry-wide.”