Neville’s posterous

More than half of office workers use sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each.

One in three of the 1,460 office workers surveyed also said they had seen sensitive company information posted on social networking sites, leading to fears about how workers use the internet.

Philip Wicks, consultant at Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate. “When someone is asked for their own use they say around 40 minutes a week, but when asked about their colleagues they say they say up to an hour a day. We have used the lower of those figures rather than the high point," he said.

“It is the sort of thing people constantly use which means that its not quite the same as doing a crossword, where you spend half an hour on it and it is finished. When it comes to an office environment the use of these sites is clearly becoming a productivity black hole. Social networking can be a cause for good when it is used professionally but I think organisations need to wake up – that is not the way it is always being used.”

David Clubb, managing director of Office Angels, the recruitment firm, added: "As younger generations join the workplace, I believe UK businesses will, inevitably, have to embrace social networks, recognising the benefits of providing staff with well deserved downtime, but also their potential for business networking.”

[Three quarters of the office workers surveyed said their employer had not given them any specific guidelines on how to use Twitter, but 84 per cent believed it should be up to them what they post online.

It would be easy to simply dismiss surveys like this with the technical expression "what a load of bollocks." Some people will look at the details with some alarm, though, and will think it confirms their worst suspicions that employees everywhere are not to be trusted.

What a sorry state of affairs!

But two bright spots - David Clubb's reality quote that illustrates how you ought to look at tools like Twitter; and the reality picture in the last paragraph: 75% of those surveyed reporting that their employer has offered no guidance on how tools like Twitter fit into the workplace.

Makes this post on my blog seem so timely: A clear call to action for social media guidelines and training

Opportunity knocks, everyone!