How do firms keep employees as productive during the World Cup?
Brazil will allow state workers to leave early when there’s an afternoon match or come in late when Brazil plays in the morning, during the first round
Every four years, as football fans gear up for the World Cup, researchers engage in a game of their own: trying to determine just how costly the tournament is to employers and economies. Our own contribution to this genre suggests that the calculation is a bit more complex than is generally acknowledged. To calculate the number of productive hours at risk in this year’s tournament, we assume local office hours are between 9am and 5pm, and that 50% of each country’s workforce will be interested in watching the games. We estimate that a total of $14.5bn in GDP worldwide could be at risk in the first two weeks of the tournament. From there, though, the story gets more complicated. Perhaps counterintuitively, watching football could actually make for a more productive workday. As one recent paper demonstrates, watching soccer can affect a fan’s happiness an hour before kick-off and up to three hours after the players disappear down the tunnel. Other research has shown that boosting peop...
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