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Technology thwarts World Cup absenteeism
Tuesday, May 14 2002
by Matthew Clark


Technology may be the only way to keep employees at work during the World Cup,
with firms like Citibank streaming matches directly to workers' desktop PCs.

Last week a report from Deloitte & Touche in the UK said that 77 percent of UK
companies lack employee policies for watching the World Cup, yet 64 percent of
employees intend to watch games that are broadcast during office hours. According
to Deloitte & Touche, of those employees planning to watch the games, 31 percent
will do so illicitly, following on the Internet, TV or radio. But around eight
percent of employees intend to call in sick in order see important matches. 



"It is worrying that so few HR directors have established a formal policy to
manage the obvious demand to watch the World Cup. If one employee in 10 calls in
sick, it could cause severe disruption to business," said Jon Clark, human
capital consultant at Deloitte & Touche.



But the consultancy also said that of those organisations that do have a clear
World Cup policy, the most popular option (28 percent) is to allow employees to
follow on a big screen or on the Internet, and 15 percent will ask employees to
use flexitime.



The situation for human resources directors certainly does not get any easier
when Web sites, such as Umbro's HREF="http://bunkoff.umbro.com/">Bunkoff.umbro.com, give workers humorous
ideas about how they can ditch work to watch the big matches. 



But Paul McEwen, vice president for technology at Citibank in Dublin, said that
his company is giving employees access to the games on their PCs to stave off the
millions of euro in lost productivity the matches will produce. "Using
Microsoft Windows Media, games will be streamed directly to PCs, insuring that
our workforce can follow the fortunes of their teams from the comfort of their
desktops," he said. "Absenteeism can be extremely costly...it is essential
that we do not suffer any loss in productivity."



Citibank has purchased a system from Eircom subsidiary LAN Communications that
consists of a broadcast server, located at Citibank's office in Dublin. The
server can take live or pre-recorded events from analogue sources (VCRs,
satellite feeds, cable feeds, .avi, .mpeg). The server then converts the video
pictures into IP packets using MPEG video-streaming standards. The IP packets are
transmitted via multicast technology to desktops on the Citibank network, which
rus on an existing Nortel backbone.  







In all, 1,200 Irish Citibank employees will be able to follow all of the matches
on certain selected large screen desktops throughout the Citibank facility in
Dublin. 







"While the World Cup offers Citibank an initial use for this product, we also
intend to use it for viewing senior management broadcasts, long distance learning
and for the formation of virtual teams across geographically dispersed areas,"
McEwen added. 





Andy O'Kelly, technical director at LAN, said that the World Cup was a perfect
opportunity for the company to trial the service, which he said was easily
installed thanks to the high level of sophistication of Citibank's existing
network.