Office pools are about as common as coffee breaks
 

Come Monday mornings these days, the chatter among some employees at Weston Forest Group is not about lumber or wood panel products, but about touchdowns and point spreads.

That's because about 40 of the 200 employees of the Mississauga-based firm are keen to know how they stand in their office sports pool.

"They talk about the results, they wonder who won, some complain about how poorly they have done . . . it's part of the general office chit-chat," says vice-president Steve Ekstein, a participant in Weston pools since he joined the company 18 years ago.

And such workplace wagering isn't taking place just at Weston. In many offices across North America, sports pools have become as common as coffee breaks.

"These office pools are running rampant," says Norman O'Reilly, a sports marketing expert at Ryerson University in Toronto, who, based on 13 years of research, estimates that sports pools take place in fully half of Canadian companies.

His research has shown their growth has been spurred tenfold, he says, since the mid-1990s arrival of the Internet, which has given poolies easy access at work to the sports stats that help their betting.

This, of course, is the hot time for football championships that draw huge betting interest.

In the United States, one-third of more than 2,500 workers surveyed by on-line job network CareerBuilder.com last December said they have entered an office pool at one time or another to wager money on the Super Bowl, the top prize in American professional football, this year taking place Feb. 5.

Pool boosters say that such workplace wagering on a variety of sports all year-round helps to make a company a fun place to work, build morale and loyalty, and improve communication among employees.

But detractors consider them a needless distraction that encourages goofing off and sacrifices productivity, especially when they're organized and discussed during office hours -- when employees are supposed to be working.

Malcolm MacKillop, national practice leader of employment law at Fraser Milner Casgrain LLP in Toronto, says that sports pools often cause more trouble than employers care to admit.

Perennial pool losers, he says, often turn into whiners and spread negative vibes at work. And personality conflicts can arise over something as simple as, say, participants not paying their entry fees but expecting to have a shot at the pot.

"The difficulty is that if someone gets upset or alleges someone is not being honest with respect to a pool, it could lead to conflicts and the need for discipline," Mr. MacKillop says. "What happens if the person running the pool is dishonest? Is there cause to terminate or discipline that person even though what he has done has nothing to do with his job?"

Others say office pools put a serious dent in productivity.

Canadian statistics on lost productivity from office pools have not been compiled but, in the United States, the fantasy football pools played by an estimated 32.2 million devotees of the National Football League will cost U.S. employers $196.1-million (U.S.) in lost productivity during the 2005-2006 football season, calculates Chicago-based global outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas Inc.

A good portion of that lost time comes from pool players compiling statistics and researching their picks on the Internet during work hours, chief executive officer John Challenger says.

Still, despite the potential impact on productivity, Mr. Challenger advises employers against banning sports pool participation at work.

He contends that that the damage to morale and loyalty resulting from a betting ban could be far worse than the harm caused by a few minutes a day of on-line team management.

"There are all kinds of distractions in the workplace on any given day . . . another five or 10 minutes is not going to make or break a company," he says.

Mr. Ekstein agrees.

At Weston, where employees as well as some customers and suppliers take part in a National Football League pool, a Canadian Football League pool and a National Hockey League playoff pool, only about one-fifth of staff are involved.

And, at most, the employee who does the organizing eats up 20 minutes of company time a week compiling statistics.

While some other staff surf the Net for sports statistics and there is plenty of discussion among poolies when results are published, productivity has never suffered, he says.

At Media Profile, a 45-employee public relations firm in Toronto, vice-president and partner David Wills says the football and hockey pools played by about 20 employees for pots of $40 to $150 have strengthened his company.

How so? Take the example of one senior consultant in the company's marketing practice who rarely interacted with employees in other departments.

Several years ago, some staffers convinced her to join a pool. The woman, a non-hockey fan, began playing and eventually won a pot.

In the process, she broadened her relationships with colleagues, who suddenly became comfortable going to her with questions about marketing.

"Through the pool, more people knew about her and asked her for advice on projects that cross over. She was able to bring a new perspective to the way they handle their clients," Mr. Wills says.

Ironically, the Media Profile employee who runs the company's NFL pool leads a five-member team that handles the account of sportsbook.com, a British-based on-line sports betting Web site.

Recently, sports-minded pool participants who work on other accounts began taking an interest in the client and offering ideas on how to attract media attention for the Web site. Some of their ideas were pitched to the client and implemented.

As in most workplaces, Mr. Wills and his superiors enforce no hard and fast rules on governing employee behaviour in pools.

"If I found an employee to be distracted, if I felt they were too obsessed, it might be a problem but to spend a couple of minutes a day is not going to cause me any headaches," he says.

Ron Burke, a professor of organizational behaviour at York University's Schulich School of Business in Toronto, sees no need for a policy about sports pools.

"So what if your employees talk sports at work?" Prof. Burke says.

"People spend hours in any given week not doing work, so whether they're talking about what they did on the weekend, the hassles involved in dealing with city hall or talking sports, it is no big deal. Most companies see it as the price they pay when any kind of work is being done."

But gambling specialist Patricia Davies, owner of Kirmits Counselling & Consulting in Toronto, has some issues with pools.

She sees them having the potential to spark an obsession with gambling, which can lead to absenteeism and other work-related problems.

Until recently, she was a problem-gambling specialist at Toronto's Bellwood Health Services Inc., which treats people with alcohol, drug, gambling and sex addictions. There she dealt with many gambling addicts whose problems were connected to workplace gambling, including sports pools.

"It can start with poker at breaks, then it gets into ProLine tickets and a bookie. What begins as a small thing becomes more intrusive in the workplace, your mind is thinking more about it. It can become an addiction that takes people's concentration off work," Ms. Davies says.

It can also have negative spinoffs on others in the office, such as dissolving friendships when money is borrowed for bets but not paid back. And it may have dire consequences for colleagues trying to kick the habit.

She recalls a former client at Bellwood who, after receiving treatment for his gambling addiction, returned to work only to be surrounded by employees who were betting in the company sports pool.

"It was like putting him in a mini-casino. . . . This person had paid a lot of money for treatment, but his fellow employees hadn't thought about that. It was sanctioned by his bosses and made it more difficult for him to deal with his problems."

For such reasons, she believes sports pools have no place in the workplace.

"You would not have someone work on an assembly line or in an office sitting with a bottle of beer or wine or smoking a joint . . . you would do something about that. So what makes gambling okay? It leads to an addiction for some people. just like alcohol and drugs."

Mr. Ekstein sees no such threat to his company.

"Pools in the office are just one of the things we do to help employees bond and have fun at work," he says. "We also have an air hockey table that the workers play at lunch and after work, we have socials and we curl together.

"They're all part of what we do. Our employees have a blast."

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Randy Ray, Globe and Mail

Originally published January 18, 2006 9:23 am EST