June 04, 2026
The World Cup Could Cost $17 Billion in Lost Productivity. But the Real Risk Is How Employers Respond.
The FIFA World Cup begins on 11 June, and with it comes the familiar wave of productivity anxiety. New research from workforce management platform UKG, drawn from a survey of 8,000 employees across eight countries, puts the potential cost of lost productivity at $17 billion globally.
The numbers are attention-grabbing. According to UKG, 27% of employees plan to come in late, leave early, or skip a day entirely. Fourteen percent say they’ll secretly stream matches while on the clock. Eleven percent admit they’ll turn up hungover. Managers are part of this too: 45% plan to ask for last-minute flexible working around matches.
UKG’s Chief Product Officer, Suresh Vittal, highlights the stakes of such large-scale, short-notice disruption: “Productivity drops, customer experience suffers, and morale takes a hit as the rest of the team is left to cover the gaps.”
He’s right that there’s a risk here. The World Cup lasts for 39 days and only some of the matches are known in advance, which means organisations can only go so far to prepare for the disruption. But the data only tells half the picture.
The $17 Billion Figure Doesn’t Tell the Whole Story
The UKG data examines what employees plan to do, but it doesn’t ask why.
For many people, the World Cup is a life moment. Fans who have waited four years for this tournament – some of whom have never seen their country compete at this stage – are trying to be present for something that matters to them. They’re not viewing this as a way to be less productive.
As Danny Seals, CX and EX Strategist, notes: “Organisations are full of superfans. Some of these employees have been waiting so long for this moment – they want to remember where they were when it happened, even if that means watching it at the pub. That’s a real human need, and it deserves a real organisational response.”
The question for HR and EX leaders to consider is how, as an organisation, they can respond to this need by designing a fair flexible working approach.
Benefits Built for the Business, Not the Person
The deeper issue surfacing here is that most organisations have too rigid a reward and benefits framework. One that doesn’t adequately factor in moments that matter in employees’ lives.
“We build benefits around the business calendar, not around people’s life moments,” Seals says. “When I lost my dog, it felt like a significant moment – yet I couldn’t easily take time away, and my partner had to face it alone. That was horrible. For some employees, the World Cup carries that same emotional weight. The organisation that recognises that will earn trust that lasts long after the final whistle.”
We are seeing some progress here. For example, bereavement leave policies are expanding to recognise pet loss, pregnancy loss, and other forms of grief that don’t fit neatly into traditional HR frameworks. Flexible working is, in theory, embedded in many organisations’ employee value propositions (EVPs).
And yet, when a moment of genuine personal significance arrives, some organisations still default to absence management rather than human understanding.
A Low-Stakes Test of Your Organisation’s Flexible Working Approach
The World Cup is, in fact, a relatively low-stakes test of something much larger: whether an organisation can be genuinely flexible in response to what its people actually need.
“There’s a real opportunity here for organisations to lean into that need rather than manage against it,” Seals notes. “Done well, this becomes a moment of genuinely personalised experience – the kind that makes people feel seen. Done badly, it just confirms what employees already suspect: that the business sees them as a resource, not a person.”
The organisations that handle this well will probably be those where managers have the discretion, mental space, and confidence to have an honest conversation with their team about how to make it work. And where flexibility goes beyond policy and is practised among teams, led by empowered managers.
The answer to “can I watch the semi-final?” shouldn’t need a formal request. Of course, there is complexity to deal with – multiple people wanting time off when the work still has to get done. But bringing everyone into the conversation and co-creating a system that is as fair as it can be is far better than a blanket ‘no’.
Those conversations, or the absence of them, will directly impact not only the employee experience, but the customer experience too. Staff who feel trusted and treated as whole people bring a different quality of engagement to their work. Staff who feel micromanaged or dismissed, on the other hand, carry that into every customer interaction. They may not be watching the match, but they’ll also not be mentally present for the people they serve.
What Experience-Led Organisations Can Do Differently
Here are a few ways organisations with strong employee experience foundations might use the World Cup as a moment to demonstrate they are truly people-first:
- Acknowledging, openly, that this matters to people in the run up to the tournament.
- Proactively offering flexible start and finish times during key match days.
- Creating informal viewing moments – a screen in the break room, an early finish on semi-final day – that bring people together rather than force them to choose between work and something they care about.
- Bringing teams together ahead of the tournament to co-create a fair solution.
- Empowering managers to make judgment calls rather than escalating every request to policy.
Organisations should see the World Cup as a moment to show whether the employee experience they claim to offer is real. It costs little to do, and will earn returns on discretionary effort, morale, and retention long after the tournament draws to a close.
