to think that employers needing to make allowances for staff to watch football is ridiculous and a non issue?

[SaggyAndLucy]

watching this morning. apparently acas have released guidelines and advice to employers for dealing with staff wanting to watch the world cup games.
personally I think it's ridiculous. its a game. If you're paid to work then work and watch the football later!

I think it's just being pragmatic. Loads of people calling in sick will screw up businesses, so making sure people can see the matches is probably cheaper

If allowances aren't made then a lot of staff will phone in sick leaving a business potentially unable to operate effectively for the rest of the day.

YANBU. Ridiculous - unless they are going to give everyone equal amount of time off.

That's what annual leave is for. The guidance should be 'allow them to take the annual leave if they need it but arrange between them who will cover the work whilst the game is on'.

I greatly question a person's priorities and quality as an employee if they are calling in sick to watch football.

see I'm kind of of the opinion that if you've got a job you do it. If you need to call in sick to watch football then maybe you don't need a job that badly!

I remember this happening a few years ago at work with the World Cup and Olympics. I appreciate that in this age of wrap-around news it is probably impossible to record the game/watch highlights later without knowing anything about it. But surely this is an occassion to take annual leave? (and I speak as someone who needs all their leave for school holidays). I work flexitime (with core hours), so I can see that temporary flexi arrangements could work, but that is opening up the possibility of too many people bring away at once.,

What about other sports? DH is a cyclist, takes a day or two off every year to watch The Tour de France. No one has ever offered him special working conditions to facilitate this!

I just see it as part of the excitement!

My colleagues have made allowances for me for a number of different reasons (one was allowing me to leave early to watch a sporting event) and there was no big deal made out of it.

Sometimes there's nothing wrong with someone just wanting to do something nice for another person - even if that does include letting someone amend their hours to watch a football game.

I'm guessing the person will have to make up for the hours lost so I don't really see why it has to be made into a problem?

The first 3 matches are at 11pm, 5pm and 8pm. A lot of people, other than shift workers will have finishes working. Maybe those wanting to watch the 5pm game would need to take 30 minutes leave. England unfortunately won't get much further tthan that anyway.

YABU .....and this from someone who has no interest in watching the World Cup.

However I can understand why an employer would do this. It helps keep people at work when they may otherwise take a day off (sick or annual leave etc) it helps foster good employer - employee relationships and may help team build/strengthen working relationships amongst colleagues as they can bond over a common interest.

Whether we win or not is irrelevant - don't you ever do anything/play a sport/game unless you're going to win?!

My work debated this. Looked into sorting out TV licence etc, then someone pointed out the matches were outside office hours anyway

To be honest when I worked in jobs with other people around [offices etc] it was a dream for them to piss off and leave me alone to not engage in football talk all day.

When is the first England game? I nave a need for something from Ikea and I know England games are a good time to go.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous, but I can see that it might be the most pragmatic thing to do. Of course people should take annual leave if they want to watch it, taking sick leave is absolutely unacceptable. However, if previous experience has shown that lots of people do take sick leave for this kind of thing, then it makes sense to try to pre-empt this - the difficulty is that it's virtually impossible to distinguish between those who are genuinely sick on these occasions and those who are skiving!

The thing with the world cup matches is that generally during a popular match business will fall off anyway so less staff needed while the match is on but either side it's all hands on deck.

Pathetic

That's what annual leave is for.

Well, I'm not quite sure why the BBC is saying these are new guidelines, since as far as I can see from the ACAS site they were issued in 2010. I guess they may have been updated. Anyway if you read them they are quite sensible, mainly about being flexible and managing expectations. If people are wanting to leave half an hour early to see a match allow them to take a shorter lunch hour where possible for example. Not interested in football myself, but if other people are I don't see this as a problem.

I worked for a company once that allowed us all to down tools and watch it on the telly in the canteen, it was a huge morale boost in a tough time (redundancies etc) and meant those who didn't want to watch didn't have to. Those who did made up the time later and they didn't end up with half the place taking the whole day off, just a couple of hours break.

YANBU!!

We had something similar in NZ when the Rugby World Cup was on, they changed the all the school holidays around just to so most of the games would be in the school holidays, so the first term was 12 weeks long and last term was 7 weeks long (term after the games)

If people are that desperate to watch it, they can watch it later even if they know score otherwise they can take annual leave.

I think it makes total sense. If the company is making an effort for the staff and employing 'carrot' rather than stick, the employee is more likely to show more give in return.

Make allowances for your employees for some things and they are likely to reciprocate - treat them like workbots and it will be less likely that they will afford you flexibility when you need it.

The world cup and other sporting events are prime opportunities to show willing imo.

When DS was in primary school the HT was a huge footy fan and arranged to put the World Cup matches on the drop down screen in the hall. Can't actually remember which WC it was but the matches started at around 2.30 so any child and member of staff who wanted to watch it could go. It was only 1 or 2 games and the kids really enjoyed it.

Most people I know are expected to work plenty of unpaid overtime. Don't see many companies complaining about that so I'm not going to worry too much about this.