More than half of British workers admit they update their profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and MySpace during office hours, while one third said they spend around half an hour of each working day using the websites.

Additionally, around six per cent of the working population - or two million employees - admitted to wasting more than an hour of company time each day carrying out activities on social networks.

The survey of 1,000 employees revealed that the drop in productivity brought about by social networks could be costing the economy up to £14 billion per year - even though the Telegraph reports respondents largely denied the productivity-sapping nature of the websites.

According to the survey, only 14 per cent of social networkers felt using the sites made them less productive, while 10 per cent claimed that using social media actually boosted their productivity. Two thirds of respondents said they would oppose a ban on social networking at work if introduced.

"Our results clearly show that UK workers are spending increased time whilst at work on social media networks, which, left unchecked, could have negative repercussions on the productivity of many companies across the country," said Lee Fayer, managing director of MyJobGroup, which carried out the research.

"Whilst we're certainly not kill-joys, people spending over an hour per day in work time on the likes of Facebook and Twitter are seriously hampering companies' efforts to boost productivity, which is more important than ever given the fragile state of our economy.

"Companies would do well to monitor use of social networking sites during work hours and ensure that their employees are not abusing their freedom of access to these sites."

Fears over the impact of social networks on businesses are nothing new, especially after a survey commissioned by Morse last year revealed that one in three workers had seen sensitive company information posted on social sites, such as offensive comments about customers posted by staff of PC World and Currys.

Source D. Warburton - Big Mouth Media

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