News Feed
Employee issues and how to deal with them
With the World Cup looming, employers may have concerns about how to deal with employee requests to take time off for the games.
Strictly speaking, as an employer, you are not legally obliged to give employees any time off, other than the usual entitlements such as authorised annual leave, sickness etc. However, being flexible for such occasions can help motivate and engage employees.
As an employer, you need to ensure that you meet the needs of your business throughout the course of the World Cup, so it is worth planning ahead and anticipating how you will respond to employee requests for time off to watch the games.
There are several ways in which you can accommodate employees without compromising the needs of your business:
Flexible working
It is unlikely that all staff will want to watch all of the games, so you could consider being flexible with working hours, for example, starting later, finishing earlier, or taking extended lunch breaks, as long as there is adequate cover for the business to operate and provided that the employees agree to make the time up at a later date.
In businesses that operate on a 24 hour basis, you could also consider allowing staff to change shifts with some of their colleagues who do not want to watch the games, in order that the business can still operate.
Annual leave / unpaid leave
Employees can take annual leave, if of course they have followed the usual company procedure and booked the days in advance.
You could also consider allowing employees to take unpaid leave in order to watch the games, but you need to plan ahead and determine if the business could still operate if the entire workforce wanted the time off to watch the games.
Attendance and performance
You should make it clear to all employees that any abuse of the company’s sickness policy or poor performance throughout the course of the games will not be tolerated and may be subject to disciplinary action.
You may also want to remind staff of your alcohol misuse policy and reiterate to employees that it is not acceptable for them to attend work either drunk or hungover, if that will prevent them from carrying out their work as normal.
You should explain to staff that measures have been put in place to enable them to watch the games, as above, and therefore abuse of these policies will result in disciplinary action.
It is well worth obtaining a copy of the World Cup fixtures list – you can obtain these free of charge from various places, including some supermarkets – that way, you can plan your staffing in advance if you intend to allow employees time off and you can also see if there is any correlation between particular games and sudden bouts of sickness absence.
