We hope that you’re not betting on men’s college basketball. Or perhaps more important, that your staff isn’t. In fact, we hope that they don’t care at all.

$1.8 billion – that’s the amount of money the annual March NCAA men’s Division I basketball tournament could cost businesses in unproductive wages during the first week of the tournament alone, as distracted workers research for their tournament brackets and watch games streaming online.

Oh, the Madness.

The Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. estimate is based on the number of people expected to participate in office pools, the amount they could earn, and the amount of time they’ll waste on related activities. Yes, trash talking to all your buddies about going 32-for-32 in the first round is considered a time-waster.

“March Madness and the subsequent office pools have been going on long enough that employers can no longer claim to be caught off guard by the annual event. Some have tried to squash these pools, most simply ignore them and others have found ways to embrace the tournament as a team-building and morale-boosting opportunity,” said John Challenger, CEO of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a press release.

Although it’s nearly impossible to gauge the exact impact of March Madness, a 2009 Microsoft/MSN survey found that 45 percent of Americans planned to pencil in their picks for a pool. Based on that survey, Challenger figured that as many as 58.3 million workers could participate in office pools. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those workers make on average about $6.23 every 20 minutes. On an assumption that each participant worker on average uses 20 minutes of the workday unproductively – if finding the 60-year average for first-round upsets really is considered unproductive, that is – $363.2 million will be wasted

And that’s just one day. Challenger multiplied that by five for each day between selection Sunday (March 14) and the end of the first round (March 19) and came to the $1.8 billion estimate.

During March 18-19, the first two days of the tournament, 16 of the 32 games will be played during business hours. CBS Sports now streams the games online, a service that last year attracted 7.52 million unique visitors – a big jump from 4.92 million in 2008.

Nielsen NetRatings found that 92 percent of fans who watched games online during 2008 did so from their work computer.

Challenger found that despite the cost of unproductive workers and potentially slow Internet service in the building, most businesses see no reason to establish special March Madness policies.

“In fact, with worker stress and anxiety heightened, a little distraction could be just what the doctor ordered. The key for companies is finding a way to maximize the positive aspects of March Madness so that they outweigh any potential negatives,” Challenger said.