Summer of Sport

A summer of sport

With the World Cup just around the corner and Wimbledon following not long afterwards, requests for annual leave or working from home, long lunchbreaks, increased levels of sickness absence, all need to be managed.  It is also important to note that there are a lot of benefits on giving some flexibility to staff during this period and taking advantage of the inclusive nature of sport to build team spirit.

We have a few hints and tips for Businesses on preventing any potential staff problems that may occur during the summer of sport.

Planning Ahead:

We advise all businesses to have a staff handbook which would cover all your legal requirements as well as the policies and procedures for your business. If you decide to offer some flexibility to your usual policies for example, allowing flexible or altered working hours, allowing more requests for annual leave for odd days, it’s important to communicate this to employees well in advance.  Any flexibility to your policies must be applied fairly and consistently across the Company.

Internet Usage:

It’s is highly likely that there will be an increase in employees streaming live sport events during working hours.  Do you have a policy in place for personal use of the internet?  Is personal use only allowed in employees own time or do you allow occasional incidental use during working hours? It’s important to remind employees of what is and isn’t permitted.  Also if you monitor internet usage for legitimate business reasons, do your employees know and understand the policy and does your contract of employment contain a provision enabling you to monitor usage, which is a requirement under GDPR?  You also need to be mindful of whether your premises has a TV licence as without this, it would be illegal to watch or record live TV programmes or download or watch BBC programmes on IPlayer.

Sickness absence:

A robust sickness absence policy is paramount within any business to maintain good levels of attendance with the Company.  Any increased levels of sickness absence during this period should be monitored, particular during key sporting events or on the morning after a big game!  We always advise that Managers should carry out a return to work interview for all sickness absence and any concern that a sickness is not genuine should be fully investigated and may need to be dealt with as a disciplinary issue.

Discrimination:

Sport is a good leveller and is great for building team spirit but If you decide to stream any matches or even take your employees down to the pub to watch a match, please bear in mind that in a multi cultural, multi nationality workforce, not all employees are going to be England fans!  Any favouritism towards one particular nationality could be potentially discriminatory under the Equality Act 2010.  We would like to hope that common sense would prevail but passion towards a particular team and banter in the office, can get out of hand and the last thing you want is an harassment claim from an incident taking place either inside or outside the office!

Finally:

If you do decide to offer some flexibility or incorporate some aspects of watching or enjoying some sport in the office, it is a well-known fact that watching or talking about sport can have a positive effect on morale, can boost team spirit and ultimately improve team performance.

If you have any questions or would like any advise on the above information, please get in touch with gill@bradleyhayneslaw.co.uk or call 01905 900919.