Head of Chartered Management Institute suggests "sports chat" be "curtailed" at work

[VincentHanna]

A bit of Monday madness for you all

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51261999

Chat about football or cricket in the workplace should be curtailed, a management body has warned.

Ann Francke, head of the Chartered Management Institute, said sports chat can exclude women and lead to more laddish behaviour.

"A lot of women, in particular, feel left out," she told the BBC's Today programme.

"They don't follow those sports and they don't like either being forced to talk about them or not being included."

"I have nothing against sports enthusiasts or cricket fans - that's great," she said.

"But the issue is many people aren't cricket fans," she added, arguing bosses should crack down on sports banter.

Ms Francke is concerned that discussing football and, for example, the merits of video assistant refereeing (VAR) can disproportionately exclude women and divide offices.

"It's a gateway to more laddish behaviour and - if it just goes unchecked - it's a signal of a more laddish culture," she said

"It's very easy for it to escalate from VAR talk and chat to slapping each other on the back and talking about their conquests at the weekend."

I don't particularly even like sports, and my office is 95% women, who talk about Love Island and **** like that, but I wouldn't want any of this stuff "curtailed"

 

[VincentHanna]

Its like this at work with my boss, as soon as we finish talking about how Spurs suck and Liverpool are great we start talking about how many ho's we pulled at the weekend.

 

[VincentHanna]

The thing about Arsenal is, they always try to walk it in!

IT Crowd covered this 11 years ago. I have next to no interest in half the "gossip" that goes on in the office but just a few mins keeping up to date on whatever is being discussed regularly is a lot easier than not being involved and helps keep morale up.

Nah, balls to this.

I'm not going to pretend to like something to try and keep up with a conversation. Many times I've zoned out when friends started talking football down the pub - luckily i'm not the only non footie fan in our group of friends so there's usually someone else to talk to.