Selima

This morning, as I sat contemplating the day ahead, I found myself increasingly confused by our society and the way that we deal with things – or maybe its just our differing priorities.

Yesterday I sat through the Emergency Budget presentation and winced as the Chancellor announced cuts, frozen wages and increased taxes. I heard all of the rhetoric about the mess that the country was in, about the way that we all needed to share in the payback of the debts and the long hard road we are travelling to economic recovery.

Today, I am reading news articles about the World Cup and how businesses need to allow staff to go home early or 'log off' for a few hours, schools need to send children home early and how the whole country will be coming to a stop so that we can watch a game of football. I am even hearing the TV commentators suggesting people can watch the game at work on the BBC's iPlayer (no reference to possible bandwidth or licensing policies)!

These two diverse events leave this business in a no-win situation. Everything about the way I'd like to run the business tells me to let the staff watch the football – go home, watch the game and have a good evening in the sun. I believe everyone pulling together is good for all involved – I even think the complex score prediction game that is being run internally is a great team building event!

On the flip side, 90% of our customers are local government and public sector, so how do I explain to people that have just had salaries frozen and a pension review announced that we can't respond to their support problems, as my staff are watching football on work's time?

Lastly, I have to remember that not all employees are actually that interested in the football, and would then be asking to have their 'afternoon off' at some other time.

The result is that I have tried to be flexible, and allow as many people as practical to book time off to watch the game if that is what they want to do.

Of course this may be only the beginning – what if England progress further, what if Andy Murray progresses at Wimbledon – and the London Olympics are just around the corner!!