By Nick Collins
Published: 12:01AM GMT 26 Oct 2009
Photo: REUTERS
More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.
One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.
Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.
"When someone is asked for their own use they say around 40 minutes a week, but when asked about their colleagues they say they say up to an hour a day. We have used the lower of those figures rather than the high point," he said.
"It is the sort of thing people constantly use which means that its not quite the same as doing a crossword, where you spend half an hour on it and it is finished.
"When it comes to an office environment the use of these sites is clearly becoming a productivity black hole.
"Social networking can be a cause for good when it is used professionally but I think organisations need to wake up – that is not the way it is always being used."
David Clubb, managing director of Office Angels, the recruitment firm, added: "As younger generations join the workplace, I believe UK businesses will, inevitably, have to embrace social networks, recognising the benefits of providing staff with well deserved downtime, but also their potential for business networking."
Three quarters of the office workers surveyed said their employer had not given them any specific guidelines on how to use Twitter, but 84 per cent believed it should be up to them what they post online.
Last month staff at PC World and Currys were found to have posted offensive comments about customers on Facebook groups.
Some posters who said they were employed by the shops' parent company, DSG, said some customers deserved to be punched, and asked if they should be allowed to "cattle prod" them.
British Airways staff used Facebook to complain about customers' "stupid American accents" last year, while Virgin Atlantic employees referred to some passengers as "chavs".
Comments: -
· What Morse really mean is "YOU. WAGE SLAVE. WORK HARDER." because that's what they think their client wants to hear.
What about time-wasting tasks resulting from the usual piss-poor management that we see in this country? Reading dreary 50-page documents that could say the same thing in two? Dull, endless meetings listening to some idiot manager droning on, loving the sound of his or her own voice?
Or how about looking into the increased productivity of a workforce who know that they're respected enough to spend a bit of time on networking, spend a few minutes relaxing every now and then but whose vastly increased morale means that the company gets more done? Give a little respect, take a whole lot more productive work. If you do this, you end up with people who don't have to be told to pick up email at the weekend - they just do it anyway.
If you ban access to these sites, you really are telling people that they're just slaves. Put fances around people and you get sheep.
But of course Morse just create the usual lazy, superficial report that we'd expect from a bunch of muppets like them.
unkle dysfunktional
on October 26, 2009
at 05:35 PM
· I'm a company owner (Economy-x-Talk) and social networking on and off-line is essential.
The company is still small and I work with freelancers. When I hire my first employee, familiarity with social network sites will be a requirement.
Mark
on October 26, 2009
at 01:34 PM
· Let Bill speak for all of us (in 2005!): http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/execmail/2005/05-19newworldofwork.mspx
Are we going forward, or do we need to think backwards?
What is the benefit of responding to company's email on a sundayevening? Making an appointment while in the train? Working on a groupdocument in the evening? Making a conferencecall instead of travelling around the world?
Wake up, this is the 21th century! Don't argue with late 80's arguments.
However, we could read this as an appeal to professionalism... but why use new technology as a leverage to that?
Bart van der Meij
on October 26, 2009
at 01:05 PM
· Aw I feel so bad. That is funny I have a new study right here. Work costs me 50 hours of my life every week.
cmac
on October 26, 2009
at 01:03 PM
· Yes social media is good but up-to a limit that should vary according to your profession .
Neoteric UK
on October 26, 2009
at 12:11 PM
· I guess the writer(s)/researcher(s) forgot about the fact that in this day and age Facebook and the like are not limited to access from company machines but are accessible from mobile phones just as fast as a desktop machine so clamping down or controlling network usage for these services won't help when it's even easier to use them from your phone.
Robbie Khan
on October 26, 2009
at 12:11 PM
· 40 minutes on twitter/facebook costing 1.2 billion!! I mean did they ask the employees how much time they waste otherwise e.g. daydreaming?
Khawaja
on October 26, 2009
at 11:58 AM
· Social Media sites are being harnessed by leaders in marketing around the world as a way of communicating with customers and social groups.
Can't help thinking that the plonkers at Morse really thought they had scored a success by getting this "press" into a national daily MSM with their name on it.
Learning to work with & manage these tools & services could greatly enhance most businesses communication & motivation.
Breezeblockage
on October 26, 2009
at 11:24 AM
· Translation: keep slaving you lazy slave.
Den
on October 26, 2009
at 11:24 AM
· Well i guess that its going to benefit the company if its taking pro-actively. They could just allow their staff to twitter as long as they do a bit of tweeting on their company sites too... makes a big difference to all those guys... 40 Minutes per week is not really lost time. If it was 40 minute a day then we have trouble
Rajeev
on October 26, 2009
at 11:17 AM
· Telegraph website 'costs British economy �1.38bn'...?
Mike Nolan
on October 26, 2009
at 11:17 AM
· People will always have ways of accessing the things you ban.
But honestly, though, in an ideal world people work 100% of the time. In our world? It's the norm that people goof off, and by removing something you won't change that.
Block twitter? People will use facebook. Block facebook? People will use myspace. Block myspace? People will circumvent the blocking software. I mean, even if there was a way to truly block a website, people would just go back to talking to each other in the office, throwing paper balls into bins and sitting at their desks doing nothing at all.
Ash
on October 26, 2009
at 10:54 AM
· Hell! I just wasted �23 reading this article!!!
Mark Adams
on October 26, 2009
at 10:16 AM
· The mediocre Labour Government costs the country a great deal more than this, so why the fuss.
Peter. Chester
on October 26, 2009
at 10:16 AM
· And what, pray tell are Morse offering as the 'solution' to the social media devil? Could it possibly be a pricey internet filtering suite? Hmm?
You could just as easily replace 'Twitter, Facebook' in the headline with 'Gossiping with workmates' or 'Staring out of the window'.
Social media is not some kind of devil that will destroy worker's productivity if we don't crush it - it's a management issue, not a technical issue, and filtering it out of existence so organisations can't gain from its positive business benefits is, at best naive and at worst, downright stupid.
Stuart Harrison
on October 26, 2009
at 08:43 AM
· I used to spend about 16 hours a week in meetings I don't have to be in but that are part of the company's "quality and communication" process. Do we have a survey on that, too?
Chris Heilmann
on October 26, 2009
at 08:43 AM
· I used to spend about 16 hours a week in meetings I don't have to be in but that are part of the company's "quality and communication" process. Do we have a survey on that, too?
Chris Heilmann
on October 26, 2009
at 08:43 AM
· That cannot be true. There is probably a gazillion other way to waste time and we all know that.
C Smith
on October 26, 2009
at 08:22 AM
· No different to phones. Companies have restrictions on personal calls at work, no different for internet access. They just need some technical advice from consultants. Like those who comissioned the survey and succeeded in getting the press to advertise them by conjuring up scary figures. �:-)
Chris
on October 26, 2009
at 08:05 AM
· 40 minutes per week? And the rest! I'd not be surprised to learn that people are only actually working 40 minutes a day, and spending the rest of the time blogging, tweeting, facebooking and YouTubing. The fact is that traffic on all social networking and sharing sites drops off a cliff at the weekend, and there are so many of these sites that it's a full-time job just keeping up with them.
Once you've read all the online newspapers, read all your friends' updates, posted your own, caught up with iPlayer and read the latest lolcats, it's time for lunch, isn't it?
Rob McMinn
on October 26, 2009
at 08:05 AM
· Well, I'll be dip! It's bout time tat a survey wus taken to show tat tis crap don't produce nothing but more idle crap time and the only thing anyone gets from it is a bad case of ankylosing spondylitis and a dose of renal colie.
madmilker
on October 26, 2009
at 06:53 AM
· How long do these so-called business leaders think workers spend texting people on their mobile phones during offices hours? It is impossible to stop people communicating with each other during anytime with modern technology. Ban Twitter at work, and people will email. Ben email and they will SMS. Ban SMS and they will telephone.
Edward Perry
on October 26, 2009
at 06:49 AM
· So employers should just turn it off. Or only allow use during lunch breaks.
One might ask why the Government has spent tens of millions of pounds giving all public sector workers Internet access?
Could it be to stop them getting bored?
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