COMPANIES have been encouraged to ban employees from chatting about football in the workplace.
Ann Francke, head of the Chartered Management Institute, has insisted it encourages “laddish behaviour” and leaves a lot of women feeling left out.
Football chat can allegedly lead to laddish behaviour in the workplaceCredit: Alamy
Speaking on BBC’s Today programme, she said: “A lot of women, in particular, feel left out.
“They don’t follow those sports and they don’t like either being forced to talk about them or not being included.”
But Francke claimed: “I have nothing against sports enthusiasts or cricket fans.”
She suggested that discussions about football – and VAR in particular – could have a bad knock-on effect.
Francke said: “It’s a gateway to more laddish behaviour and – if it goes unchecked – it’s a signal of a more laddish culture.
“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.”
Oatley said: “If you ban football chat or banter of any description, then all you’re going to do is alienate the people who actually want to communicate with each other.
“It would be so, so negative to tell people not to talk about sport because girls don’t like it or women don’t like it, that’s for more divisive.”
Regular chat about football in the workplace can allegedly exclude womenCredit: Getty – Contributor
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Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
