Even HR agrees that the day after the Super Bowl should be a holiday
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Even HR agrees that the day after the Super Bowl should be a holiday
More than 100 million people are expected to tune in this coming Sunday when the Patriots face off against the Eagles. While the two teams compete for the championship title in the Super Bowl LII, millions of chicken wings and beers will be consumed, making getting up for work the next day more difficult than on an average Monday.
In fact, 27 percent of employees have skipped work after the Super Bowl altogether. About 36 percent of male employees and 16 percent of female employees have called in sick or made a different excuse for skipping work after a major sporting event, according to a recent survey of more than 1,000 workers by OfficeTeam. And while other workers didn’t stay home to nurse their Super Bowl hangover, another 32 percent of employees did arrive later than usual. On days after the big game, 42 percent of men and 20 percent of women were late to the office.
And yes, HR has noticed.
When asked by OfficeTeam after which sporting event would they want to see a paid national holiday, 72 percent of the 300 HR managers surveyed said the Super Bowl.
Among those who noticed the drop in productivity the day after the Super Bowl was Kraft Heinz. The company announced last year that it was giving all of its employees a day off after the Super Bowl.
“Statistics show over 16 million people call in sick or don’t go to work and for those that do, productivity plummets so far that the country loses on average around $1 billion,” Kraft Heinz said in a statement.
Since the country is already losing that much money in lost productivity, it could make sense for others to follow the example of Kraft Heinz, and declare the Monday after the Super Bowl a national holiday. Unfortunately, creating a national holiday is not as easy as it seems. In order for all workers to get a day off from work, the particular day would have to become an official federal holiday. Among other days that some people think should be an official federal holiday is election day. Past efforts to make election day into a federal holiday have been unsuccessful.
“It would be like trying to pass a constitutional amendment,” Michele Swers, a professor of American government at Georgetown University, told Marketplace in 2016.
The last federal holiday to be added was Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday back in 1986. One of the reasons passing a new federal holiday might be difficult is the pushback from businesses.
“If you’re going to make it a federal holiday, that’s basically forcing companies to give workers additional vacation time, so that’s going to cost them money and productivity,” Swers said.
So make sure to set your alarm clock next Sunday after the Super Bowl. You have work the next day.
| Why Election Day isn’t a federal holiday |
| The campaign to make Election Day a work holiday |
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