You might have heard that there's a World Cup going on - and according to a recent survey conducted for YouGov, as many as one in four 25-34-year-old men are planning to take an unauthorised absence when the World Cup kicks off.
That's quite a chunk of the work force, so how can employers and employees do to try and avoid having to play work hooky?
The conciliation group Acas says flexibility from all sides is needed during the tournament to ensure a productive and engaged workforce. It advises employers to have agreements in place regarding how they will deal with time off (especially where there are competing requests), sickness absence and watching the matches during work time.
This could even be in the form of a specific sporting policy, which some employers do already have.
Employers may want to be more flexible in allowing annual leave during the World Cup period, with the understanding that this will be a temporary arrangement. While there is no legal requirement for employers to give employees time off to watch World Cup matches, employers should deal with any competing requests fairly, as they would with requests at other periods of high demand (such as Christmas and the summer holidays).
For their part, employees are advised to acknowledge that such flexibility might not be possible due to the needs of the business, and even if it was, it would only be a temporary arrangement.
Other flexible approaches could be achieved by employees making time up if they left early, home-working, a swapping of shift patterns, simply allowing staff to listen to the radio and/or watch live matches. England's final (and almost certainly vital following the Italy result) group game against Costa Rica is a 5pm kick off and smart employers could boost morale by ending the day at 4.30 getting some light refreshments in and getting everyone round a big screen.
At the end of the day The World Cup is as an opportunity for employers to improve engagement with their staff and boost morale so a practical and flexible approach is advised - it's these little touches of flexibility and dare we say humanity that go an awful long way to retaining good people.
Besides, England might be home by the end of next week!
