According to a survey conducted by Morse, an IT service provider, approximately three-fifths of the U.K.’s office staff said that they logged in to sites like Twitter and Facebook during office hours. They spent 40 minutes every week on such social networking sites for personal use during work hours, and it is estimated that this cost their businesses 1.4 billion pounds a year in terms of productivity.
Morse reported that out of the 1460 workers it surveyed, 57 percent agreed that they used these sites for personal use at their workplace. This wastage of time approximately equaled a whole working week being lost every year.
More than 75% of those surveyed said that their company hadn’t issued any sort of guidelines regarding the use of social networking sites. This was leading to a decrease in productivity, loss of brand value and a whole lot of security risks.
There have been incidents in the past where employees from companies like British Airways and Virgin Atlantic had abused customers on such sites, leading to the companies’ brands being damaged. Still, 84 percent of the workers who were surveyed felt that the discretion regarding things being posted should be left to them.
Image by kerryvaughan under Creative Commons.
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Well I think they will enjoy Twittering or using other mirco-blogging or social network for a very short period because 54% of US companies are blocking access to these websites: http://blog.cyclope-series.com/2009/10/study-54-of-companies-ban-social-networks-at-work/
These statistics don’t surprise me, unfortunately. But, if it’s not twitter, it’s email. If it’s not email, it’s personal phone calls. If it’s not personal calls, they’ll be standing around the water cooler or hanging out in the break room talking to coworkers.
There are theories about workplace productivity and how our brains aren’t designed to do well in a cubicle, much less a sedentary environment.Some experts also believe that the average person simply can’t work constantly for eight hours, that breaks actually improve focus and productivity.