Go on, embrace March Madness, employers
There’s nothing crazy about fostering happy employees, who tend to be more productive
Special for USA TODAY It’s not called March Madness for nothing: Amount of money Warren Buffett offered anyone who could fill out a perfect March Madness bracket in 2014: $1 billion. Number of March Madness brackets filled out in 2016: 70 million.
Odds that someone in your office will be following a game on their mobile device during a meeting: 12% (via Cnet).
That March Madness is much more than a basketball tournament is pretty self-evident. Indeed, the annual paean to college hoops has become something of a cultural phenomenon, and that’s actually a great thing. At a time when our national politics are so fractured and lines of division so sharp, it is really nice that the NCAA tournament is one thing everyone can agree on. Well, almost everyone. Sadly, according to a new survey by Office Team, almost a third of all bosses say they want no March Madness in their office.
Only 11% of managers said they welcome the tournament into their offices.
Let’s agree on one thing: Hooray for the 11%. These are the MVPs of business. They get it. And you should, too. There are two different, albeit equally important, reasons to embrace March Madness in the office.
Whether you like it or not, people in your business, during business, are going to be paying attention to the tournament for the next few weeks. They are going to fill out brackets, and they will be following games.
WalletHub says corporate losses due to March Madness unproductivity are expected to hit $4 billion this year. Boo hoo. Let’s face it: We all do it. You are going to be paying attention to your team and your bracket, I’ll be paying attention to my bracket and my (11-time champion!) UCLA Bruins, and our work colleagues are going to be doing the same. Stemming the tide would be as mad as trying to chase down and stop an open Steph Curry three-pointer.
Increased odds that you will order a pizza if your team loses: 19%.
But beyond a pointless inability to stem the tide, the far more salient and relevant reason you should embrace March Madness at work is that it will create a happier, more cohesive, more positive workplace.
It will, paradoxically, make your business more productive.
Consider those poor souls who have to work for those 36% of bosses who think the workplace is no place for such frivolity. Can you imagine what it’s like to work there, for them? Do you think these are productive workplaces? Do you think the team willingly implements the boss’s game plan? Do you think they stay late to get extra shots up?
And the converse is equally true, too. A business that embraces March Madness is very likely a place where people like to work. These best businesses know that happy employees are productive employees. Happy employees are creative employees. And as far as the bottom line goes, happy employees create happy customers who become repeat customers.
The way to get to that happy place, then, is to create a culture that might, for example, embrace March Madness — a culture that fosters cooperation, fun, open communication and something more than just work, work, work. It is that positive culture that will create a winning team every time, even considering that ...
Your odds of filling out a perfect bracket are 1 in 9.2 quintillion (9,000,000,000,000,000,000). Go Bruins! Steve Strauss is USA TODAY’s senior small business columnist. Reach him on Twitter @SteveStrauss or MrAllBiz.com.