Come on, England!

I nearly won the K&H Fantasy Football league that we held a couple of months ago, coming from nowhere in the final week. And my team Reading has had a fantastic end to the season, nearly winning a place in the play-offs. Brian McDermott has really turned the team around since he took over as manager.

I’m hoping these are both good omens for England’s chances in the World Cup, and I’m looking forward to watching as many of the matches as I can.

But this poses a problem for employers. There will be more than 570 hours of football on television over the course of the World Cup; 23 of the 64 games are scheduled to take place during office hours. One of England’s matches – against Slovenia – is in prime office time: 3 pm on Wednesday 23 June.

What are employers to do? Risk losing their staff to endless hours of ‘sickness’, or go to the opposite extreme and hire a room so that they can all watch cosily together and go all out for the bonding experience, sharing the joys and the disappointments? And what about those employees who couldn’t care less about football?

There must be a happy medium. A Business Link survey taken before the last World Cup revealed that 62% of businesses polled believed that their employees are more collaborative and enthusiastic at work when given the opportunity to follow the games with their colleagues.

So what to do? There’s an excellent website with tips on how employers can turn the World Cup into a positive experience for everyone. Have a look at it here. And let’s hope that England can repeat its 1966 achievement.