• FREE RESOURCES
        • Accounts Payable
          Finally! The trick to securing greater T&E compliance
          Benefits
          Rooting out folks who don’t belong on your health plan: A 6-point dependent audit checklist
          IT
          3 costly misconceptions about biz email compromise
          Credit and Collections
          Collecting via email: 4 must-make moves in your subject line
          Accounts Payable
          5 Tough-to-spot signs that an invoice is fake
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • Staff management
          120 Proven Communications Tips for Today’s CFO
        • Payroll
          Handling Nonexempt Employee Pay: Stay Compliant and Avoid DOL Audits
          Accounts Payable
          T&E Best Practices: Complete Guide to Ensure Compliance
          Payroll
          Payroll Best Practices: 4 Ways to Save Time and Money
        • Staff management
          Email Best Practices: A 6-Question Quiz
          Staff management
          Innovative Communications Strategies: An Email Case Study
          Staff management
          A 5-part Framework for Successful Workplace Communications
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES
  • LOGIN
  • SIGN UP FREE

CFO Daily News

  • FREE RESOURCES
        • Accounts Payable
          Finally! The trick to securing greater T&E compliance
          Benefits
          Rooting out folks who don’t belong on your health plan: A 6-point dependent audit checklist
          IT
          3 costly misconceptions about biz email compromise
          Credit and Collections
          Collecting via email: 4 must-make moves in your subject line
          Accounts Payable
          5 Tough-to-spot signs that an invoice is fake
  • PREMIUM CONTENT
        • Staff management
          120 Proven Communications Tips for Today’s CFO
        • Payroll
          Handling Nonexempt Employee Pay: Stay Compliant and Avoid DOL Audits
          Accounts Payable
          T&E Best Practices: Complete Guide to Ensure Compliance
          Payroll
          Payroll Best Practices: 4 Ways to Save Time and Money
        • Staff management
          Email Best Practices: A 6-Question Quiz
          Staff management
          Innovative Communications Strategies: An Email Case Study
          Staff management
          A 5-part Framework for Successful Workplace Communications
        • SEE MORE
          PREMIUM RESOURCES
  • CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES
  • Accounts Payable
  • Credit and Collections
  • Payroll
  • Accounting
  • Benefits
  • Finance Technology
  • More
    • Employment Law
    • Strategy
    • Policy and Culture
    • Fraud
    • Payments and Transactions
    • Budgeting and Forecasting
    • Banking
    • Staff Management
    • Cost Control
    • Supply Chain
    • IT

Ready for some (fantasy) football? Two key steps to keep productivity up

Jennifer Azara
by Jennifer Azara
September 5, 2014
  • Accounting
2 minute read
  • SHARE ON

Are you ready for some football? How about the bite the sport will take out of your bottom line?  

More specifically, we’re referring to the pastime associated with the sport: fantasy football.

It’s estimated employers will lose $13.4 billion due to lost productivity over the upcoming 15-week season. That’s according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas (the same folks who calculate the costs of  March Madness each year).

That figure assumes the 59% of estimated employees who participate will devote just two hours a week picking their teams, tallying their points, making their trades, etc. And it’s not just your male employees – more and more women are getting involved in the action, too.

So what should your company do about it? Probably nothing.

Beware the backlash

Sure, your IT folks could block all fantasy football sites from work PCs. But experts maintain a move like that is likely to backfire pretty quickly and result in a drop in morale that could do way more damage to productivity than maintenance of some pretend football teams ever could.

And after all, once one distraction finishes, another soon replaces it. Cyber Monday and holiday shopping season aren’t too far off!

Of course, that doesn’t mean you need to just sit back and take the hit.

Here are two strategies from Challenger and Gray that can help keep productivity up, no matter what the distraction-du-jour:

  1. Create some new productivity benchmarks. The start of the year’s final quarter is a perfect time to introduce some new goals that make productivity even more of a priority in Finance.
    Whether it’s paycheck exceptions or prompt-pay discounts captured, giving your staffers some new goals to focus on will keep them on track. You might even have staffers come up with some new productivity goals of their own to help secure buy-in for the renewed push.
  2. Know when enough is enough. Yes, coming down hard on folks for adjusting their fantasy football team rosters on a Thursday afternoon probably isn’t worth it. But if co-workers feel like someone on your team isn’t pulling his or her weight because too much time is devoted to “extracurricular” activities, you could end up with a department-wide morale problem.
    Urge all finance supervisors to keep an eye and ear out. If folks seem to be taking a yard when you’ve giving an inch, it’s time to step in and urge them to ease up.
Jennifer Azara
Jennifer Azara
Jennifer, a member of the CFO Daily News staff, has covered business and finance for more than 22 years. She has written for CFOs, credit and collections professionals and accounts payable practitioners and has spoken at industry conferences on sales and use tax compliance.

Keep Up To Date with the Latest Finance News

With CFO Daily News arriving in your inbox, you will never miss critical stories on accounting, benefits, payroll & employment law strategies.

Sign up for a free CFO Daily News membership and get our newsletter!
  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
CFO Daily News Logo
  • ABOUT CFO DAILY NEWS
  • ADVERTISE WITH US
  • WRITE FOR US
  • CONTACT
  • Accounting
  • Benefits
  • Payroll
  • Policy and Culture
  • Employment Law
  • Fraud
  • Finance Technology
  • Accounts Payable
  • Credit and Collections
  • Strategy
  • Payments and Transactions
  • Budgeting and Forecasting
  • Banking
  • Staff Management
  • Cost Control
  • Supply Chain
  • IT

CFO Daily News, part of the SuccessFuel Network, provides the latest Finance and employment law news for Finance professionals in the trenches of small-to-medium-sized businesses. Rather than simply regurgitating the day’s headlines, CFO Daily News delivers actionable insights, helping Finance execs understand what Finance trends mean to their business.

Privacy Policy Terms of Service
Copyright © 2021 SuccessFuel

WELCOME BACK!

Enter your username and password below to log in

Forget Your Username or Password?

Reset Password

Lost your password? Please enter your username or email address. You will receive a link to create a new password via email.

Log In

preloader