Your Guide to an Office Fantasy Football League

Football season is finally here!  It also happens to be the time of year where fantasy football costs employers more than $16 billion a season in lost productivity, according to outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas.  So, how do you address the reduction in productivity?  Find a way to EMBRACE IT!

The Fantasy Sports Trade Association found that nearly 57 million people played fantasy sports in 2014, and it was expected that 75 million would play in 2015 in the US and Canada.  With participation continuing to grow, employers more than likely have several employees involved in fantasy sports.  So, why not use it as a tool for employee engagement by starting your own work league?

Providing your employees with something they have in common will give coworkers who normally wouldn’t communicate with each other a reason to do so.  Even better, it allows your staff to communicate on a non-work level with supervisors, leading to them becoming more familiar with each other’s other interests.  The same goes for employees who work in different departments and rarely collaborate with each other.

Here’s some best practices for starting a fantasy football league in your workplace:

1. Leave your wallet at home – every state has different rules when it comes to gambling laws. Play it safe by making your work league simply for bragging rights, but give the winner something to show off.  In your inaugural year, collect donations to have a traveling trophy crafted so your annual champion can be recognized during the offseason.
2. Define the expectations – starting a work league doesn’t mean employees are allowed to use their work time to check fantasy rosters and stats. Make it clear to your employees that fantasy football activities should not interfere with productive work time.
3. Keep no one on the bench – include everyone. Don’t make assumptions that specific people in the office will not want to join.  You may have no idea, but your quiet coworker is secretly a fantasy football stud.
4. Enjoy the increased employee morale and camaraderie among your workers.

Still don’t buy it?  Check out this recent study by Quantum Workplace which showed an engagement gap of nearly 12 percentage points between employees who participate in Fantasy Football with coworkers verses employees who participate but not with their coworkers.   Quantum’s analysis even showed that “employees participating in a fantasy football with their coworkers have higher scores on survey items measuring teamwork and trust with coworkers.”

Questions?  Contact TEG!