The World Cup, which starts today, is a great opportunity for businesses around the world to capitalise from employees’ national pride. However, the tournament features many games during work hours, causing workers to have to potentially miss games, which can cause staff to feel unmotivated.

It is therefore important to set clear rules for you employees. Such rules should include:

• Whether employees will be allowed to watch games at work.
• If companies are showing England games, they should consider their stance on allowing other employees who support different countries to watch their games.
• They may also want to consider whether they will be monitoring employee productivity during the games, and whether employees will be allowed to keep up with the scores via internet searches on their phones or laptops.
• Making sure employees who are not football fans do not miss out on any benefits.

As with all of our tax tips and web pages this information is necessarily summarised and of a general nature.  If you would like detailed specific advice please contact us.