Every year, I get bombarded with PR people wanting to connect me to “experts” who want to yak about how disruptive “March Madness” — the annual NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament — is on the workplace.
And every year, I ignore those PR people and the experts they’re pushing because I’ve never seen or heard of anyone actually reporting that their workplace has significantly been impacted by March Madness.
I’m sure it happens somewhere, but in general, all the talk about it is overblown.
That’s why this new poll from CareerBuilder was very welcome news, because it shows just how little impact March Madness actually has when it comes to your workforce.
Here’s the key finding: According to the CareerBuilder survey, only one in five (19 percent) of workers said they’ve participated in a March Madness office pool in the past, while only 11 percent said they plan to this year.
Yes, you read that right. Only 11 percent of workers say they are going to be involved in a March Madness pool this year. Where are all the experts to comment on THAT?
Well, if you are one of those who still believe that your employees are wasting too much time worrying about their March Madness brackets, the CareerBuilder survey also revealed this:
In other words, the people you most need to worry about wasting time on March Madness in the office are your managers and highly paid people. Somehow, all those experts never mentioned that, either.
Here are a couple more interesting findings from the CareerBuilder survey:
Actually, the part of the CareerBuilder survey I enjoyed the most was about the “other” office pools that workers get involved in. This is a fun list, so see how many of these sound familiar to you. Full disclosure: I have wagered a dollar or two on more than one of these.
They include:
The thing about this last list is that it shows that workers bet on all sorts of things in the workplace, and that March Madness is probably the least of your worries if you’re concerned about how your workforce is spending their time.
This survey was conducted online in the U.S. by Harris Poll on behalf of CareerBuilder among 3,008 workers ages 18 and over (employed full-time, not self-employed, non-government) between Nov. 6 and Dec. 2, 2013 .With a pure probability sample of 3,008, one could say with a 95 percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 1.79 percentage points.
One more thing: is it possible that workers who are involved in office pools like the one detailed in this CareerBuilder survey are actually MORE engaged in the workforce than employees who are not involved in things like this?
I don’t know the answer, but it sounds like a good survey for the next time people start obsessing over March Madness at work.