For two days every March, offices around the nation find themselves clutched in the grip of the annual fervor of the NCAA men’s college basketball tournament.  Frankly, it’s easy to see why, as even people who carry a general malaise toward undergraduate roundball get inevitably sucked in to the bevy of Cinderella stories and emotionally charged moments that the tourney consistently brings.  Of course, since the opening (and most exciting) round of the tournament occur during business days, stories lamenting productivity loss and compromised job standards during that time is about as routine as a pre-game layup drill.  Now, these tales are either the gospel truth or downright hokum depending on where you source your media, but whether or not you believe that a severe decline in work occurs during the tourney or not merely scratches the surface of a potentially larger issue.  That is, if your company feels the need to ban the creation of the in-house office pool that has long been associated with March Madness, how can you implement the policy without looking like an utter killjoy?

The secret behind putting the kibosh on an in-house tournament lies in the realization that a healthy chunk of your employees are still going to be invested in the tournament in one way or another.  If you forbid the creation of a tourney pool, do not be naïve to the fact that some of your staff will be involved with a tournament or two in their own personal life.  And with the proliferation of the internet and social media, expect a hoop-centric buzz to emanate throughout the office anyway.  In fact, even if you have stringent anti-surfing computer technology loaded into your network, people will still find ways to get updates throughout the day.  For example, I used to work at a company where cell phones were banned from workstations and whose internet access was limited to federal and state government sites, Mapquest, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (I still have never figured out how or why we were granted access to the latter site).  Yet every time March Madness rolled around, some of my former co-workers still came up with ways to conjure up ongoing results and funnel them throughout the office.  The lesson derived from this anecdote is simple; if you are going to try and prevent people from periodically checking in on tournament action during the first round, be prepared to fight a losing battle. 

And therein lay the best way to handle the tournament if your company feels the need to prohibit an office-wide pool.  Acknowledge the fact that in-house intermittent score-checking will occur during the first round of the tournament, and don’t make too big of a furor about it when it happens.  The key to that statement is “intermittent;” if an employee does nothing but constantly surf the net looking for scores and updates, then there is an obvious problem.  That exception aside, if you allow your employees to occasionally carve out a few seconds to obtain scores without calling them to the carpet, your staff will be much more at ease with your no office pool mandate.  Plus, this small act will serve as recognition of your staff’s interests outside of work, which is something that typically goes a long way.  In other words, you will create a winning situation, which is more than I can hopefully say about Duke this year.

1. Follow through on new projects is very important – NBC’s inexplicable decision to cut away from the closing ceremony abruptly to air a new show would lead one to think that NBC didn’t feel the closing ceremony for the Olympics – the world’s chance to get closure on an extremely emotional event – was important. If you are implementing a big project or process, and you put a lot of time and effort into the launch, you need to keep up the momentum. If you abruptly move on to the next thing, employees are going to perceive it as insignificant, and all the hard work you put into it will have been for naught. Or, even worse, make you look bad.
2. It really is all about your people. As Dan Wetzel points out, the Olympics weren’t great because of the logistics; they were great because the Canadian people embraced these Olympics like they had never embraced the Olympics before. You can market your brand or your project all you want, but at the end of the day, your people have to embrace it to really make it successful.
3. Forget Employee of the Month programs. Recognize amazing employees when they do amazing things. Joannie Rochette won the bronze medal in figure skating just days after her mother passed away suddenly. Petra Majdic won a bronze model in cross-country skiing with four broken ribs and a punctured lung. Bill Demong became the first American ever to win a gold medal in the Nordic combined. Shaun White and Torah Bright pushed snowboarding to new limits. The list goes on and on. You know you have employees who are amazing and go above and beyond every day, but never get the recognition they deserve. Remember, these are the employees who make your company great, and you want them to go on keeping your company great.
4. Treat everyone equally. Jacques Rogge, IOC president, shows favoritism to athletes from the powerhouse countries. So when Evgeni Plushenko showed poor sportsmanship after Evan Lysacek won the gold medal in men’s figure skating, Rogge stood up for Plushenko. However, when Usain Bolt showed poor sportsmanship when he won a gold medal in Beijing, Rogge verbally flogged him for it. Employees know when you play favorites, and it creates poor morale in the office. You should always make sure that all policies are applied equally and fairly.

Sure, I won’t miss the continuing saga of Lindsay Vonn vs. Julia Mancuso, or the antics of Evgeni Plushenko. But at least by remembering all of the great things that took place during the last few weeks and trying to keep that spirit alive until London in 2012, we can hold onto a little piece of the awesomeness that is the Olympics.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division reminds employers and employees that the federal minimum wage increases to $7.25 on Friday, July 24, 2009. With this change, employees who are covered by the federal Fair Labor Standards Act will be entitled to be paid no less than $7.25 per hour. This increase is the last of three provided by the enactment of the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. A revised Federal minimum wage poster is now available for viewing, downloading, and posting. Every employer of employees subject to the Fair Labor Standard Act’s minimum wage provisions must post, and keep posted, a notice explaining the Act in a conspicuous place in all of their establishments so as to permit employees to readily read it.