Social Media costing the UK economy billions

Research by the job site myjobgroup.co.uk took a poll of 1000 UK workers of which almost 6% admitted to spending over an hour on social media sites everyday while at work. This translates to 2 million of the UK’s 34 million strong workforce dilly-dallying with social media like Facebook and Twitter instead of doing what they should be for more than an hour every day. This loss in productivity has been estimated to be costing the UK economy up to £14 billion.

Spending over an hour a day on work time at these social media sites is seriously hampering company’s efforts to increase productivity which, at the moment, is an important objective given the state of the economy. While many larger company’s do monitor their employees online activities limiting access to social media sites, many small and medium enterprises do not allowing their employees free reign. 14% of the sample admitted to being less productive with access to social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube while 10% claimed the opposite was true: that access to social media sites improved their productivity.

Some organisations use social media for their businesses. Employees are encouraged to access and utilize social media as they see fit because it can help the business. Social media can be successful in getting new clients and publicity for a company. In the end it comes down to trust. Do you trust your work force to differentiate between appropriate and inappropriate media in the workplace, or to do work when on the job?

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