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Good morning! Success reporter Emma Burleigh here, filling in for Kristin while she\u2019s on vacation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The World Cup is already halfway through its mid-July run, with international teams entering the knock-out phase\u2014and nothing could quell the fan fervor taking over North American cities. Office workers are secretly tuning in from their phones, keeping a close eye on scores during meetings, and heading straight from the office to bars to catch the action. It\u2019s a $17 billion productivity drain, yet some employers are making the most out of the global spectacle.<\/p>\n
There are some offering up practical pivots to the World Cup madness. Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs, Citibank, and JPMorgan Chase are temporarily allowing staffers to work from home on match days, as traffic clogs up commutes in North American host cities. Heineken also rolled out a Fan Volunteer program encouraging employees to use their volunteer time off (VTO) to give back to their local communities while gathering for the games during work hours. And even brands are shelling out for white-collar workers to get in on the fun. Stella Artois, a sponsor of the sporting event, rolled out a \u201cWork From Bar\u201d campaign, footing $100,000 worth of Stella Artois beverages for professionals who tune in at local pubs during their 9-to-5s.<\/p>\n
Other employers are leaning into the moment by encouraging staffers to enjoy the games together, instead of stealthily streaming from their cubicles. E-Land World, a fashion retailer, held a viewing party of the South Korea vs. Czech Republic match at its Seoul headquarters earlier this month. And at Canadian legal tech company Clio, World Cup watch parties have become a fixture of office life this summer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe leaned into it and thought, \u2018Okay, folks are going to come in anyhow, let\u2019s make sure that it\u2019s a positive experience for them,\u2019\u201d Marina Harris, chief people officer at Clio, tells Fortune.<\/em> \u201cI don\u2019t at all view it as a distraction. We view these moments where folks are coming together in the office and building connection as being a multiplier, as actually giving back in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n The business has been streaming the FIFA matches in its offices across Canada\u2014from Barnaby and Calgary, to Toronto and Vancouver\u2014since the event kicked off last month. Clio also offers even greater leniency around its hybrid work model, but employees haven\u2019t been stacking up their remote days. In fact, Clio staffers have been coming into the office more than usual on game days to experience the energy with their coworkers. And they have plenty of opportunities to get in on the action; aside from regular screenings, Clio threw an office mixer complete with World Cup decorations, games, and snacks. And next month, the business will host a \u201csummer social\u201d in Toronto themed around the tournament.<\/p>\n Clio says that its World Cup employee strategy is already paying off. Employees are choosing to come in and connect, instead of tuning in from home. The games have also boosted morale, energizing employees on the clock. And the CPO doesn\u2019t buy into the productivity panic; she says that by stepping away from their desks to take a World Cup brain break with colleagues, staffers return to their laptops recharged. And Clio is determined to back up its culture bet with hard stats; after the competition comes to a close in July, it\u2019ll crunch employee engagement to see what has changed.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t [measure] productivity as keystrokes in front of your laptop. It\u2019s not just about hours worked, it\u2019s truly finding ways to manage your energy and getting the most out of your day,\u201d Harris says. \u201cThey may lose 20 minutes or whatever it ends up being, but they\u2019re gaining that energy, and we see them being more productive when they come back to their work.\u201d<\/p>\n Emma Burleigh<\/strong> A round-up of the most important HR headlines.<\/em><\/p>\n Meta is pressing pause on a controversial employee tracking program that monitored computer inputs after a security problem leaked staffers\u2019 sensitive data. <\/span>Wired<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n EV tech company Lucid is cutting nearly a fifth of its workforce as part of a cost-saving strategy, with interim CEO Marc Winterhoff stepping down effective immediately. <\/span>CNBC<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n More than half of non-LGBTQ employees said they \u201cfeel prouder\u201d working for an employer that openly supports the community, according to a recent Harris Poll survey. <\/span>HR Brew<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Everything you need to know from <\/em>Fortune.<\/em><\/p>\n Digital coworkers. <\/b>Fiona Fung, the engineering leader behind Anthropic\u2019s Claude Code, said that <\/span>overusing AI agents was<\/span> making her staffers\u2019 work a \u201clonely experience.\u201d \u2014<\/span>Sasha Rogelberg<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Internet insiders. <\/b>Cursor CEO Michael Truell tapped into the company\u2019s <\/span>Discord server as a recruiting<\/span> pool, hiring members from the social platform to develop products at the $60 billion business. \u2014<\/span>Sydney Lake<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n Office autocrats<\/b>. Narcissistic leaders are more likely to <\/span>resist work-from-home and<\/span> hybrid schedules as they seek to wield their influence in person, a new Wharton study found. \u2014<\/span>Claire Zillman<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Companies #turn #World #Cup #culture #play #loosening #attendance #hosting #watch #parties<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Good morning! Success reporter Emma Burleigh here, filling in for Kristin while she\u2019s on vacation.\u00a0 The World Cup is already halfway through its mid-July run, with international teams entering the… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9715,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[11648,1524,1292,3080,6891,3826,800,1074,4646,2733,2693,11649,1102,11647,10165,1641,11646,3040,11650,2949,887,3016,2100,602,1007,5611,3229,1062,10947,7796,3043,335,51,1965],"class_list":["post-9714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-attendance","tag-canada","tag-companies","tag-company-culture","tag-culture","tag-cup","tag-executives","tag-food-and-drink","tag-fortune-workplace-innovation","tag-goldman-sachs-group","tag-heineken","tag-hosting","tag-jpmorgan-chase","tag-loosening","tag-management-strategy","tag-mexico","tag-north-america","tag-office-culture","tag-parties","tag-play","tag-productivity","tag-remote-work","tag-sports","tag-tech","tag-turn","tag-u-s-workers","tag-wall-street","tag-watch","tag-work-culture","tag-work-from-home","tag-worker-productivity","tag-workers","tag-world","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Success Reporter
emma.burleigh@fortune.com<\/p>\nAround the Table<\/h3>\n
Watercooler<\/h3>\n