It’s NCAA Tournament time. Ten years ago you’d see stacks of brackets from the USA Today littered around the photocopier. A guy you’re pretty sure works in IT would walk around collecting $5 per draw.  And to catch the early games, employees would linger over a long lunch at Chili’s or hover around someone’s woefully inadequate portable television – completed bracket in hand, of course!

Today, most pools are entered, scored, and paid for through sites like ESPN and PayPal, and the afternoon games are easily accessed through online video sites and even on your iPhone or iPad. But just as surely as the inevitable winner bases their picks on a preference for Blue Devils over Bulldogs are you confronted with an annual set of statistics estimating $1 – $4 billion in lost productivity during March Madness and dire warnings of federal gambling statutes. As communicators, often charged with promoting awareness of and compliance with corporate policies, we find ourselves in the unfortunate position of policing our communication tools to prevent  these legal or productivity risks. A compelling case could be made that those efforts would be misplaced – in fact, let’s go out and encourage participation in the office pool. No sporting event brings the country together quite like the NCAA tournament.  The Super Bowl only involves two cities; college bowls amount to a corrupt, elitist patronage system; golf, NASCAR, and hockey remain a bit niche; and baseball’s just boring. But everyone has a connection to at least one school in the NCAA tournament, and every school has a shot. Even better, the simplicity and unpredictability of the bracket format make the event accessible to non-sports fans, and the compelling narratives behind the teams keep everyone rooting for a Cinderella story.

For communicators, this is GOLD! We should be looking for just such opportunities for our employees to connect across functional and geographic boundaries. Just talking brackets today, I found out that one colleague went to school in my hometown (‘Nova!) and another shares my enthusiasm for statistical formulas to support picks (see Ken Pomeroy).  These connections actually make it much more likely that my fellow Nova fan will just approach me directly if she needs to know what the CEC is working on; or that I’ll know a true stats geek if I need support analyzing a member’s benchmarking data.

Indeed, it’s these personal connections that are the pre-req for the peer-to-peer support we know is so important to employee engagement and alignment with corporate priorities.  For example, when we studied the best-practice internal social media tool from Sabre, we found that 80% of the early dialogue on the site was personal in nature, but that over time it shifted to be primarily professional. We believe that the professional benefits of peer support cannot be realized without those more human interactions, and NCAA tournament pool is one of the easiest ways to generate those connections.

Technically, federal law prohibits sponsored gambling, but those statues aren’t enforced for office pools. Indeed, in many states, as long as no one profits from the pool (i.e., all money is paid out) and everyone has the same odds of winning, you won’t run afoul of any laws. On the flip side, consider this:  If the NCAA tournament could generate just 1% more in personal connections and peer support across enterprises, we would see a 0.1% in productivity benefit according to CEC research, which for a $1billion company nets you about $6.5 million/year. Using an annual U.S. GDP of $14.7 trillion, that ratio equates to about a $95 billion economic benefit from our office pools.  You really wouldn’t be doing your patriotic duty if you didn’t encourage them!

So, now that we’re all free to share, who do you have?  As always, I’m picking Duke!