Bangalore:Cricket is the most religiously followed sports in India, and when its Cricket World Cup (Father of all cricket tournaments) there is no stop for the cricket fans including employees of the corporate houses. Cricket World up is knocking on the door and organizational heads are concerned about the impact it might have on the productivity of the company. Cricket World Cup, 2011 starting from February 19 and co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh will have a flip side for corporate productivity. Corporate houses of India may register a significant drop in productivity during the month of February-March as one in five employees would like to take time off to watch their favourite matches. No matter you own a television set at home or not, you are never away from the scores of the live matches. People walking on streets don't mind peeping into any shop having TV just to have a glance of current score. Cricket is a religion to people of India. They are extremely attached with the sports. People in big sophisticated organizations sometimes forget about sophistication and express their emotions whenever their favourite player hits boundaries or score century or half century. Emotions forget boundaries if their favourite team wins and excitement gets doubled if the win is against the team they hate the most. At least 10-12 million people will watch the match and result in a productivity loss of 768 million man hours, according to the survey conducted by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry in India. Presence of teams like Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Australia, England and South Africa will most definitely draw away the interest of employees from their work. 20 percent of the respondents say that they will take some days off from the work to watch matches of their favourite teams without any disturbance. Around 50 percent hold the opinion of working for shorter days. Interestingly, rest of them have planned to utilize their annual paid leaves during the time or just simply call up and say they are sick. Productivity will get affected further as most of the games are slated to be played during office hours. "Definitely there would be an impact on the productivity side as we can't ask our employees to keep themselves away from watching matches. We are expecting many sick leaves coming from Feb 19 onwards." Says Navin Shah, VP, reputed Investment Bank. Majority of the managerial level employers are of the opinion that it's the greatest event and employees should be given a chance to enjoy it because it doesn't carry any violence or politics. Some CEOs are of the opinion that it's a personal choice of any individual but their enjoyment should not come at the expense of the organization. Around 35 percent employees say that their employers are providing a place to watch matches at their workplace. "Our company is basically work driven, rather than time driven. Employees are responsive enough to set their priorities. They just need to submit their projects according to the deadline. We provide them with LCD screens at strategic distance like cafeteria," says Arun Choudhary, Principal Software Engineer, MNC. 85 percent employees have shown keen interest in the World Cup. Post match absenteeism can also be there as fans stay up late nights and try to get sufficient sleep. Companies should take suitable measures to minimize the affect of absenteeism and try to accommodate employees according to the preferences of watching matches. Providing an access to watch selected matches from office may improve the attendance of the employees as match will get finished in few hours and they can work for rest of the day. "Company should take some measures for their employees to entertain themselves along with the work at least during Cricket World Cup which they have been waiting for four years," says, Anant Suri, Software Engineer from leading Software Company. (Names have been changed as per the request)