Soccer and the Workplace

world-cup

Ask anyone who knows me even casually and they’ll tell you I’m a baseball guy. Most would be surprised, however, to find that the event I most wanted to see—and had to pre-order tickets more than a year in advance—at the Summer Olympics in my hometown Atlanta was the gold-medal women’s soccer game. The United States edged China 2-1 on Tiffeny Milbrett’s goal with about 22 minutes to play, and the University of Georgia’s Sanford Stadium rocked a patriotic fervor.

In the aftermath of soccer’s latest push to tempt the American mainstream, much of the debate is what effect the United States’ World Cup run will have on the sport’s future: Will Tim Howard’s greatness help popularize the sport, or were Clint Dempsey’s exploits a passing fancy?

Let’s focus on what the run may have done in the present. Offices around the country—including here at THP (and at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, according to a reporter friend)—congregated for watch (and sometimes work) parties. And soccer fans flooded bars, city streets and even stadiums to watch the Americans (how about nearly 30,000 at Chicago’s Soldier Field?).

Yahoo! Finance predicted a nearly $700 million loss in worker productivity for the U.S.-Belgium knockout affair, which started near the end of the workday on the East Coast and just after lunch on the West Coast yet attracted 22 million U.S. viewers.

I tend to agree with University of Richmond leadership professor Don Forsyth, who has challenged the annual Challenger Gray & Christmas estimate that companies lose billions in productivity during the first week of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament with, “That’s a lot of money, no doubt, but as the efficiency experts of the old days of organizational charts and stop watches discovered, there is more to workplace productivity than time at task.”

In an opinion that ran in papers across the country from March, Forsyth continued:

The gains March Madness yields, in terms of strengthened social and psychological relationships, might overshadow the minor losses of a few hours spent in the shared enjoyment of the tournament. The event is replete with rituals and traditions – collective acknowledgement of victory, celebration of the underdog, recognition of the fair play and competition – and when these rituals spill into the workplace they align the group, turning the parts into a whole. Such rituals are strangely satisfying, for they strengthen interpersonal bonds and heighten camaraderie. March Madness can boost cohesion in the workplace, providing for free what those teambuilding junkets so often promise but can't deliver.

The Americans won’t win this year’s World Cup. And we likely won’t be the favorite to win the World Cup four years from now, but chances are, we’ll be watching. And our bosses, clients and colleagues will be better off because of it.

Sean Ryan

A former print journalist, Sean joined The Hodges Partnership in 2003 and leads Hodges’ media relations team. He manages media relations strategy and helps place client subject matter experts on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and more. Sean regularly helps place op-eds in top-tier papers like the New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today.

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