Scott Smith landed in Denver on Thursday for a one-day business trip, but he didn’t plan on doing too much work.
Smith, 29, said he met with clients for about four hours Thursday. He said he spent more than 2 1/2 hours watching the NCAA basketball tournament.
“And probably no work will be done (today),” Smith, vice president of a Salt Lake City-based legal consultancy, said jokingly between bites of his lunch at ESPN Zone in Denver. “For two days out of the year, we let it slide.”
March Madness, the college basketball bonanza surrounding the tournament that started Thursday, is a slam-dunk for college-hoops nuts – and an airball for some business owners.
“The expectation is very clear: Our first priority is to serve our customers and to enjoy the basketball games on workers’ own time,” said Bob Toevs, a Qwest spokesman. “I’m sure we have a lot of people who can’t wait to get home and enjoy the games.”
Denver-based Qwest doesn’t have a specific policy barring workers from joining NCAA pools, Toevs said, but managers are keeping an eye out for workers wasting time at March Madness-related websites.
Restaurants and bars count on the NCAA Tournament as a source of revenue.
“We’ve been waiting for this since football ended,” said Mark Kinsey, owner of the Sports Column bar, near Coors Field.
Kinsey said his daily patron count trip les or quadruples on game days during March Madness, providing a big boost during lunchtime hours when business is typically slow.
Kinsey said customers he had spoken to included “professionals in suits on their lunch breaks” as well as “people who had called in sick to work.”
The first two days of the Tournament could cost U.S. employers up to $260 million in wages paid to unproductive workers, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global job-placement firm based in Chicago.
The cost to employers will grow to $1.2 billion by the time the 19-day Tournament ends April 2 in Atlanta, according to the firm.
The worries for some companies don’t stop at gambling, wasted time or workers rushing out the door. Bandwidth- heavy streaming video of the games can bog down computer networks, making it difficult for employees to access e-mail, the Internet and other work-related computer tools.
Information-technology workers at companies are able to detect when there are spikes in network traffic and will often receive complaints from employees who are unable to access the Internet, said Mike Hronek, networking engineer for CDW, a Chicago-based provider of technology products and services.
Workplaces “can block a specific Internet site or subset of sites, such as cbssportsline.com or all sports-related sites,” Hronek said.
But Hronek says blocking sports websites that carry NCAA Tournament footage could prompt workers to seek out “other less-secure sites where they could accidentally download something malicious,” he said. “If you’re going to have a bandwidth challenge, you’re far better off if the traffic is coming from respectable, clean and secure sites.”
Large companies may block websites that offer gambling, pornography or other content – such as personal e-mail programs – deemed unsuitable or a productivity drain.
Hronek said many companies will choose to do nothing to stem the tide of NCAA viewers, as long as employees are doing their work.
According to the Challenger study, just 6 percent of U.S. employers have instituted policies intended to minimize lost productivity related to March Madness.
Some companies, about 23 percent, said they “embrace March Madness,” enabling workers to watch games in break rooms or come dressed in school colors, according to Challenger.
Staff writer Will Shanley can be reached at 303-954-1260 or wshanley@denverpost.com.
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-954-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
