Social networking sites, including Facebook, are distracting workers for at least 30 minutes a day, costing UK Plc close to £6.5 billion annually in lost productivity.
This is according to a new poll of 776 workers, by information security consultancy, Global Secure Systems and Infosecurity Europe 2008.
Use of these sites is sparking a rift between HR, that sees some benefits, and IT, that is looking to ban use of these sites.
It's not just time wasting costs that employers should be wary of, but the extra demand on bandwidth, say the pollsters.
Claire Sellick, Infosecurity europe event director, said: "It would appear that most CISO and IT Directors loathe social networking sites and if they had their way would ban them completely, but what is also coming across loud and clear is that the HR departments actually welcome the use of these sites – so there is a lot of internal pushing and shoving going on between HR and IT over how best to manage these sites."
According to recent research by Computerweekly.com, 63 per cent of businesses are planning to monitor or limit staff access to these sites and 17 per cent plan to ban access at work completely over the next six months.
In related news, a separate survey found that 36 per cent of HR workers did not consider monitoring employee usage of the internet as their responsibility, showing a further disconnection between HR and IT.
