Some 1.38 billion UK pound were lost every year due to workers’ low productivity brought by the excessive use of social networking websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter during working hours, a new study showed on Thursday.
Based on the study commissioned by the IT services and technology company Morse, some 57 percent of the 1, 500 respondents said that they are using online social networking platforms during working hours for personal reasons.
The respondents added that they spend over 40 minutes a week in checking and browsing their social networking pages, which can be calculated to the average wage of workers in UK that will amount to some 1.38 billion pounds.
“The boom in the popularity of social networking websites like Facebook and Twitter has also cost UK business massive losses in the past two years. This is because of the temptation to workers to visit these social platforms during office hours,” Morse consultant Philip Wicks said.
“It has literally become productivity black hole,” he added, referring to the negative results brought by social networking media to the UK businesses.
But Wicks said that these firms have already closed down on the use of social networking sites without thinking that they should take into consideration formulating and enforcing sensible use of such platforms to their business.
“These businesses have turned a blind eye to the use of social networks when they can formulate and enforce to their employees how to use these sites to their business advantage,” he said.
He pointed the some 76 percent of the respondents, according to the survey results; do not issue specific guidelines to their employees on the use of Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook.
It will be recalled that Portsmouth City Council has issued an order banning the use of social platforms, particularly Facebook, following a study that showed workers using the website for an average of 413 hours per month.
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