Government Employee Gambling

By Celeste Blackburn

Are your employees gambling at work? With the Super Bowl and NCAA basketball tournaments coming up, it’s almost a sure bet that at least some employees are gambling on sports during company time, using company equipment. Sometimes, employees don’t wait for major sporting event to gamble, instead betting on the Oscars, American Idol, and coworkers’ pregnancy due-date pools. While employees see betting pools as harmless fun, employers can be the big losers due to the drain on productivity and resources as well as the legal issues that go with employees gambling at work.

HR Guide to Employment Law: A Practical Compliance Reference

Productivity takes a time out
In a 2011 Vault survey, 56% of respondents said they spent 30 minutes or less discussing, researching, or making picks for an office betting pool. A few admit to spending considerably more time on office gambling — 4% spent 1-2 hours, 2% spent 2-4 hours, and 1% spent more than 6 hours. Only 63% of survey participants who admitted to gambling at work were willing to reveal how much time they actually spend on it — even in an anonymous survey. A few quotes from survey participants suggest that those in the unaccounted for 37% are spending more time than they want to admit on office pools:

• “I have seen coworkers not do ANY work at all, ALL day long.”
• “Almost no work gets done in the office during March.”
• “Zero office time — that’s stealing.”

Now consider this: In 2007, consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas crunched the numbers (mainly figures about the national employment rate and average pay) and estimated that American employers lose up to $16 million for every minute their employees spend focused on the Super Bowl.

In this section:Help with problem gambling, Apply for a gaming licence, Vary an existing gaming licence, Racing betting and bookmakers, Running a Gaming venue and Objecting to a gaming licence.

• (a) While on Government -owned or leased property or on duty for the Government, an employee shall not conduct or participate in any gambling activity, including operating a gambling device, conducting a lottery or pool, participating in a game for money or property, or selling or purchasing a numbers slip or ticket.
• Navajo Nation Government Offices - Window Rock Map: Office of Miss Navajo Nation: Office of Management and Budget: Office of the Controller - FMIS Login Page: Office of the President and Vice-President: Office of the Tax Commission: Navajo Nation Washington Office: Office of Telecommunication Regulatory Commission: Division of General Services.
• A gaming nominee; any person performing gaming duties or tasks. Staff are performing a gaming duty or task if they: supervise employees who are responsible for the conduct of gaming; supervise the access to the internal parts of the gaming machine; supervise money clearances; issue keys for the security of gaming machines to employees.

Gambling with team spirit
Some employees, employers, and company leaders see office betting pools as a way to foster camaraderie by giving employees a fun outlet to socialize and interact with one another. In the Vault survey, 78% of participants said it was appropriate to have office betting pools and only 22% disagreed. Elaborating, one survey respondent said, “March Madness is a great team builder, engaging folks from the office, plant floor, shipping/warehouse, remote sales offices, and even a few customers and vendors.”

On the other hand, there are those employees who might agree with the survey participant who complained, “My office is awash in sinners. Some day a real rain will come and these cubicles shall be cleansed.” While all workplace-gambling dissidents may not take such a hard line, it is a safe bet that the time wasted on these betting pools irks employees who don’t participate and instead keep their nose to the grindstone.

Illegal moves
In many states, gambling at work is illegal. For instance, in Kansas it can be a class B misdemeanor. Also, many states have gaming commissions that closely regulate gambling events. In other states, gambling at work resides in very gray legal area. For instance, in Colorado most gambling is illegal but betting pools in the office are an exception to the definition of illegal gambling so long as the pool is “incidental to a bona fide social relationship.”

While it’s true that local law enforcement probably isn’t concerned with an office betting pool, there have been instances to the contrary. Notably, in 2002, a middle manager at AT&T was arrested for allegedly taking a 10 % cut — about $3,000 — from a football office pool in New Jersey. The pool at issue was advertised in office e-mails, and a coworker allegedly turned the employee in to the police. The worker was charged with promoting gambling and faced up to five years in prison. While participants in small office pools with low stakes are unlikely to be arrested, it’s never a good idea for a company to condone criminal activity of any kind in the workplace.

Also, there have been several cases in which an employee sued an employer, trying to hold it liable for financial losses. Basically, the employees claimed that employer-approved office betting pools were unavoidable and triggered them to relapse in their gambling addictions, which caused them to lose money.

Could March Madness be a disability?
The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates that two million American adults are pathological gamblers and another four million to eight million qualify as “problem gamblers.” Given the expanded definition of “disability” under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), those numbers should give employers a reason to pause and wonder if gambling addiction could be considered a disability.

The short answer is “no.” Congress expressly excluded compulsive gambling, along with kleptomania, pyromania, and various psychological disorders resulting from current drug use, from the ADA’s definition of “disability.” However, there is still room for concern. Employees who are addicted to gambling are more likely to borrow money from coworkers, be distracted from their work, and have attendance problems.

ADA Compliance : Practical Solutions for HR

Best offense is a good policy (defense)
Depending on the laws of the state, an organization that chooses to allow gambling at work should specifically define what is and isn’t acceptable in a policy. An organization that chooses to prohibit gambling at work should adopt a strong policy and stick to it. Here are several points to consider when writing a gambling policy:

• Define gambling or the type of behavior that is restricted.
• If gambling is illegal in the state, emphasize that point.
• Communicate that gambling can be a problem for employee productivity and morale.

Once the policy is in place, it should be distributed to all employees and included in the company handbook. Only 10% of the Vault survey respondents said their employers had a policy on betting pools; 43% said there was no policy; 47% weren’t sure.

One participant’s response shows that even when employees know about the policy, gambling often still goes on, “It is not tolerated . . . so you have to do it secretly.” In that case, employers should be prepared to discipline all violators (at least one case taken to the federal level hinged on an employee’s claim that he was disciplined for gambling while others of different races were not). The gambling policy also should be coordinated with the organization’s discipline program, carving out specific behaviors that are subject to discipline and termination.

Game over
Allowing gambling at work — by virtue of not having a policy, not enforcing the policy, promoting gambling, or just ignoring it — leaves an organization open to hits from all sides. Therefore, if gambling at work isn’t banned altogether, it should be approached cautiously and thoughtfully.

Creating a policy on workplace gambling is not as simple as it first sounds. Here are some of the complexities … and a possible solution.

You walk down the halls of your workplace and activity is at a level of frenzy you’ve seldom seen. It has nothing to do with work, of course. It’s all about who will win the big game on Sunday.

OK, most of it is harmless and will expire as the clock winds down on the field. But there may also be an undercurrent of money changing hands, based on who won, who lost, and what the point spread was. This may not be so harmless.

As we noted in yesterday’s Daily Advisor, the only side that always loses in workplace gambling is the employer. Lost productivity due to time spent on just one of many sports gambling activities, Fantasy Football, costs employers a cool billion dollars a week.

What it all points to is that you may need a policy on workplace gambling. Easy to write? Not so fast, sport. Actually, there are quite a number of points that need to be observed in formulating it. Thanks to SmartPolicies, BLR’s CD-based encyclopedia of more than 350 prewritten, and ready-to-use HR policies, here are some questions to ask.

–Will you prohibit all gambling or just illegal gambling? What about in special situations, such as entertaining clients?

–Are all gambling items banned from the premises? How about a deck of cards or a handheld video poker game? Or a legally purchased lottery ticket?

–What is your policy on searching employees and on what happens if they refuse to cooperate with an investigation?

–Problem gambling is often considered an addiction, just like drugs or alcohol. The Americans with Disabilities Act does not specifically protect gambling addicts from adverse employment actions, but state law may. What are the provisions in your state?

–Can you legally ban employees from gambling during off-duty hours if you feel it reflects badly on your brand or organization?

–Where are the limits if you choose only a partial ban? Is it OK for individual employees to purchase lottery tickets but not OK for employees to jointly buy them?

If you’d like to know how SmartPolicies answered these questions, here’s an abridged version of the sample policy on the CD. Keep in mind that all SmartPolicies are modifiable on your computer, so if this one is tougher (or more lenient) than what you’d prefer, it can be instantly customized to your use.

“Gambling is not permitted on company property during work hours, during breaks, during lunch periods in the company cafeteria, while traveling on company business, at company functions, or while entertaining clients.

“Company facilities may not be used to gamble (examples are given.) Gambling paraphernalia is not permitted on company facilities or in company vehicles. Gambling includes, but is not limited to, poker, horse betting, fantasy football bets, etc., etc.

“Any drawings, contests, or similar advertising promotions are to be approved by the human resources [or legal] department to ensure the promotion is not an illegal lottery.

“Employees desks, lockers, vehicles, Internet usage, email … may be inspected to ensure compliance with this policy. Employees are expected to cooperate with any investigation and employees who violate this policy are subject to discipline, up to and including termination.”

There are more than 350 other prewritten, legally reviewed policies on this CD and, if you’ll allow us a short plug for it, we think SmartPolicies is the program that smart HR managers should use to quickly and effectively meet all their HR policy writing needs. You can prove that to yourself by taking our marketing department’s offer to let you evaluate the program for 30 days at no cost or obligation. Details on how to do that, along with a look at the full table of contents and another sample of the program, can be accessed by clicking on the links below.

Government Employee Gambling Rules

View Product Sample
View Table of Contents

Government Employee Gambling Laws

For more information, or to start your FREE 30-day trial of SmartPolicies on CD-ROM, click here.

Government Employee Gambling Definition