Absence - a case of World Cup-itus?
The websites and journals are suddenly populated with articles about managing World Cup absence, estimating that 25 per cent of workers will skip work to watch the England matches at astronomical cost.
While unauthorised absence is difficult to manage and causes problems with productivity, managers may want to reflect before they institute draconian measures to deal with it during the World Cup.
Why? Because to try to force employees to “dump” their feelings of patriotism and national pride because they are inconvenient to business is not only wrong, it is hypocritical.
One of the most popular management methods of control in modern organisations is through the development of value programmes which implicitly – if not explicitly – indicate how employees should behave, the style they should adopt, even what attitudes they should hold. Shared values are seen to be part of what holds organisations together, and research studies have found that organisations which espouse certain values generate greater employee commitment. Greater commitment has long been associated with retention and the display of organisational citizenship behaviours – or “going the extra mile”.
As a result, organisations can spend significant time and money identifying the values which may drive these outcomes. Once identified, values are often “publicised” through internal marketing campaigns and occasionally, supported by more robust mechanisms such as changes to reward and recognition, values based recruitment and crucially, demonstrated by senior management.
However, organisational values are not the only values that employees are likely to adopt.
Geert Hoftstede, who has researched extensively into cross-cultural values, considers values to be “mental programming” as they guide behaviour and ways of thinking. Individuals have layers of values which may include religion, gender and social class and have been said to fulfil a variety of group and social interaction needs. As a result, individual values are complex and sometimes conflicting – you may have certain gender values which conflict with your organisation’s practices, for example.
In addition, the layers of values an individual may carry around with them also include a layer of national values.
So when looking at this football phenomenon, the first element is a deeply ingrained, learnt set of behaviours and feelings associated with an individual’s nationality, often nurtured through family, friends and language from birth.
The second element is the sport itself. Football is the most popular spectator sport in the world, in itself a powerful force. In England, as in many other countries, football club support is for life. Football supporters achieve symbolic citizenship and being a football spectator reaffirms identity.
The World Cup provides the arena for an almost irresistible combination of a global sport with a highly colourful, symbolic, emotional event. The viewing audience for this year’s World Cup is estimated to be 40 billion people. It has been mentioned that supporting a team reaffirms identity – in the case of the World Cup, it will reaffirm national identity.
Organisations attempt to engage employees with values that are often not of the employees’ choosing, and expect them to hold these values dear and guide their actions at work. According to the National Office of Statistics, in 2001 the most common length of time for an individual to be employed at the same organisation was between just seven to 24 months. The median tenure was four years.
All of this indicates that employees are likely to have been exposed to company values for significantly less time than they have been exposed to other layers of values throughout their lives.
And yet management expect employees to discard these more deeply rooted affiliations during arguably one of the most highly publicised, most hotly contested sports events on the global stage. Many people might call this unreasonable. In my view, not only is it unreasonable but it’s also highly unlikely.
There have been articles on managing absence during the World Cup which suggest that the best way to deal with it is to facilitate viewing with TVs brought into the office, and encouraging people who want to enjoy alcohol during games to take annual leave. Also, to make other suggestions to those who have no interest in football and who might otherwise be discriminated against. This seems sensible, workable and realistic.
It also acknowledges the importance of the personal characteristics of your employees, particularly when diversity and work life balance are such hot topics.
Although hangovers from celebrations and commiserations can’t be ruled out as a cause of non-attendance at work, to some extent, the issue of absence during the World Cup is lessened because so many of the matches will be played in the evening.
But even if they were being played in the middle of the day, the wider discussion about the importance of individual employee values in the workplace is still valid.