Red card for sports banter at work

MEN should stop talking about sport in the workplace because it can leave women feeling excluded, a leading businesswoman has warned.

Conversations about football and cricket can also quickly descend into ‘laddish banter’, management guru Anne Francke said.

Miss Francke, who leads the Chartered Management Institute – the body which represents the country’s top bosses – said: ‘It’s a gateway to more laddish behaviour and, if it just goes unchecked, it’s a signal of a more laddish culture. It’s very easy for it to escalate from VAR (video assistant referees) talk and chat to slapping each other on the back and talking about their conquests at the weekend.’

The 60-year-old American, who was a senior manager at a number of multinational firms, called for bosses to discourage sports talk among male employees.

She told Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘A lot of women, in particular, feel left out. They don’t follow those sports and they don’t like either being forced to talk about them or not being included.

‘ I have nothing against sports enthusiasts or cricket fans – that’s great. But the issue is many people aren’t cricket fans.’

Miss Francke’s comments prompted criticism from sports and political commentators, with BBC football pundit Jacqui Oatley saying: ‘It would be so, so negative to tell people not to talk about sport because girls don’t like it or women don’t like it, that’s far more divisive.’