Monday mornings are hard enough, but factor in a night of indulging, watching commercials (I mean football) and you have a recipe for disaster.
With Super Bowl Sunday rapidly approaching employers around the country should be bracing themselves for a bombardment of calls from employees calling in sick Monday morning because according to a survey conducted on Glassdoor.com, 12% of employees plan to call in sick or schedule a vacation day for the Monday after the big game.
What’s great about the Super Bowl is that people host parties specifically for this game—even if their team isn’t playing and even if they don’t care about football—it’s amazing! But as a result many overindulge and neglect their responsibilities the next day, i.e. work.
So as an employer how should you handle the day after the big game?
There have been several suggestions:
- Make it a flex day. Allow employees to flex their time and come into the office later in the day and stay later in the evening to make up the time.
- Distribute a post Super Bowl kit. Create these easy “gifts” for your staff. In them provide some antacids, Alka-Seltzers, breakfast bars, and anything else that’s fun that you can think of that would send the message that we want you to come to work. These kits are meant to bring relieve to those who went overboard during the game.
- Allow employees to come in late. By allowing staff to come into work later in the day, you’ll still get some work out of them—how the employees physically feel is another story.
- Throw a post Super Bowl party in the office. Encourage staff to bring in any leftovers from the parties they hosted or attended for a potluck lunch. Allow staff to enjoy lunch together in the office to chat about the game and of course their favorite commercials. By encouraging employees to take a leisurely lunch together at the office, you might encourage more workers to come into work as the day will seem less official.
- Let employees work from home. Permitting employees to work from home is a nice compromise. This way employees that might not feel so great can work from the comfort of their own home. We just hope that they’re actually working.
We hope that everyone has a great time watching the game—even if your team isn’t playing—mine isn’t but I’m going to watch anyway as an excuse to eat guacamole.
