How to handle workers aiming to "Slide Away" to an Oasis Concert

It’s expected that hundreds of thousands of ticketless fans will try to get hold of re-sale tickets over the coming days and weeks, with the busiest re-sale day expected to be on 3 July 2025. This may mean fans spending hours online waiting to snap up tickets as they become available, causing their productivity to plummet if they do this during working hours. To deal with this potential issue you could:

• advise staff that they should search for re-sale tickets during their own time, e.g. their lunch break, and not during working time, because of the potential impact on their productivity levels
• remind them of the provisions in your email and internet policy relating to acceptable use
• monitor productivity, not just internet use (as employees might covertly use their own devices).

In addition, many fans with tickets who are attending on a working day will want to arrive when the gates open, which in the case of most UK venues is 5pm (although the Manchester venue opens its gates even earlier at 3pm). Unless an employee has applied to take a day or half-day off as annual leave, this may mean they leave work early, which might go unnoticed if they are working remotely. To deal with this potential issue, you could:

• consider offering some flexibility, such as an early finish time in exchange for an early start
• warn staff that if they want to leave work early to attend any of the gigs, they will need to explicitly agree this in advance with their line manager and then make up the lost time at a later date - otherwise it's unauthorised absence
• require them to apply to take annual leave if they want time off.

Do be fair and consistent in how you apply your policies to avoid perceptions of favouritism.