It's all fun & games (March Madness, that is) until someone doesn't return my call.

I just came across this article published in the L.A. Times a year ago, written by Molly Selvin entitled "More employers allowing some March Madness at work." The article sites two companies that have given into the idea that instead of fighting their staff's lack of interest in work during the three weeks of the NCAA championship, it gladly supports it. Worse yet, it's considered "an opportunity to boost morale." What a bunch of bunk.
When using the rationale that...
"With 24/7 e-mail and Internet access fuzzing the line between home and office, employees are spending as much as 36 minutes a day, or three hours a week, checking their bank balances, arranging child care, watching TV and cyber-shopping from their desk,...."
and
"Some workers will spend as long as two hours a day tracking the NCAA tournament games.." it's just best to give in and/or give up.
Oh, wait a minute, I forgot, when I am at work, I'm supposed to be...what was that again?...yes, that's right....WORKING!
When I read these articles that glorifiy slacking, I am left with a misunderstanding of the modern work world.
From this article, I gather
1) Sports are the most important thing in everyone's life.
2) Being concerned about retaining "talent" is not the same as retaining productive workers.

The other thought I had about this, what if I were a client or customer of either of these companies and I found out my requested service was being put aside because the company wants to make sure that all their employees are enjoying the NCAA tournament. I am fairly certain I would not be feeling to motivated to be a return customer.

One of the companies that was mentioned in the article was a Maryland based banking firm, First Commonwealth Funding. So I tried to reach them today to see how business was going, in lieu of all the wonderfully inspired employees they must have. I discovered their website is down, their 800-phone line rings busy and their regular phone line doesn't ring, the line just goes down. Now either
1) Business is so good, they don't have time for new customers, or
2) Everyone in the office is installing TV's and sound systems for the big games.

Personal phone calls, internet usage, birthday cakes, staff outings, etc. are all quick diversions. But can you imaging TV's in your workplace? Playing sports games, listening to co-workers cheer & talk obsessively about it? If this is a company's way to motivate, it obviously has more problems than retention.

My last thought on this is that, the rationalization that managers use this to motivate is probably just a thinly disguised way of legitamizing their own need to slack off.

Here is the link to the entire article: http://www.latimes.com/classified/jobs/news/la-fi-madness14mar14,0,1904286.story