Social networking sitesare costing UK
businesses an estimated £6.5bn in lost productivity every
year.
The popularity of social networking sites such as
Facebook, MySpace and
Bebo are costing UK corporations £6.5bn, according to a poll
conducted by information security consultancy Global Secure Systems
(GSS) and industry show Infosecurity Europe 2008.
The poll was carried out amongst 776 office workers, many of
whom admitted to spending at least 30 minutes a day visiting social
networking sites whilst at work. That is a minimum of 10 hours a
month, which equates to three weeks of every year.
Two respondents said they were so hooked that they spent three
hours visiting such sites every day.
The visits to
social networking sites equates to potentially billions of
pounds in lost productivity every year, said GSS, plus the extra
demand on network bandwidth which is an additional cost to a
business in terms of efficiency, maintenance and resources.
Last year the TUC urged employers to put in place policies for
allowing staff to visit social networking sites during the working
day, within reason, as it claimed working and private lives were
now closely intertwined as a result of technology.