VW woos employees with World Cup sops

Port Elizabeth: Industry bosses may curse the FIFA World Cup as a quadrennial productivity sapper but there

is another school of thought which sniffed an opportunity in this month-long soccermania to strengthen bond with the employees. While most companies grapple with absenteeism and a sudden deluge of sick leave applications, the situation has been refreshingly different at Volkswagen`s South African chapter with the automobile manufacturer distributing free tickets among employees to watch matches in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. Killing two birds with the same stone, the VW management linked it to socially relevant issues, the upshot being 50 employees who volunteered for HIV/AIDS tests were rewarded with tickets for matches in Johannesburg. The company also encouraged potential Nostradamuses, giving away 30 tickets in Johannesburg to whoever correctly predicted the outcome of the opening game between South Africa and Mexico. They, however, reserved the bulk of tickets for employees of its Port Elizabeth plant. In all 1470 tickets were distributed among its Uitenhage-based employees, 600 alone for Saturday`s third place playoff between Germany and Paraguay. Dr Carsten Krebs, VW-Coordinator Soccer World Cup 2010, explained the ideas behind distributing the tickets to the soccer-crazy employees. "We wanted to motivate the employees, giving them an incentive linked to performance and prevention of HIV/AIDS. After all, it was a rare chance to be part of this lifetime soccer event in Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg. We wanted to reduce absenteeism and strengthen the relationship in the company," he said. And the response has been heart-warming, he said. "The employees were overwhelmed. There was high participation rate and little absenteeism and most importantly, we have happy staff," he added. Interestingly, sports has been at the centre of VW corporate social investment in South Africa. In 2008, they launched `A Chance to Play` project, reaching out to 30,000 children since then, providing them regular coaching clinics in sports like soccer, rugby and cricket besides offering life skill training, touching on issues like HIV/AIDS. VW South Africa also runs an educational `Soccer Bus` project with coaches reaching schools and training boys and girls, besides imparting HIV/AIDS education. In fact, some 5.5 million Rand of VW South Africa`s community budget is invested in sports and the company sponsors local football PSL football club `Moroka Swallows`. PTI