Beware the Ides of March Madness

When the soothsayer Titus Vestricius Spurinna reportedly warned Julius Caesar to “Beware the Ides of March”, Caesar ignored the premonition, heading to his fate at the Senate house with the confidence that the Etruscan haruspex was nothing more than a crazy old man.

So too have employers been warned of the incredible loss of productivity that begins this very day. According to an audio story published by NPR’s Luke Burbank, corporations will lose an estimated $3.7 billion dollars in the coming weeks. Challenger, Gray & Christmas attempts to quantify this amount each year, calculating that NCAA fans spend, on average, fourteen minutes per tourney website per day for the length of the sixteen day run. And confounding this year’s loss of focus is the fact that CBS Sportsline will – for the first time – offer every single game for free on its tournament website, March Madness on Demand.

Hannah Clark of Forbes feels that the underlying assumptions for the Challenger data may need…well…to be challenged. Her article acknowledges that employers and employees need to be wary given today’s increased monitoring of work-based surfing and the related justification for termination due to unauthorized web visits on the company clock. She adds, however, that questions surrounding the true number of NCAA fans and their web usage may have inflated the estimated loss.

So should employers embrace the frenzy of bracket toting fans or enforce written policy by limiting participation in this year’s tournament? Regardless of your choice, you can’t feign Caesar-like surprise if your bottom line is impacted by the seemingly spontaneous cheers and jeers echoing throughout the corporate halls.

“Et tu, NCAA?”

Let’s keep the conversation going.