Access to social networking sites at work is costing UK businesses billions of pounds in lost productivity


Twitter, Facebook, MySpace. Jargon that's increasingly becoming part of our everyday life.

But should it be part of our everyday professional life?

Here in the UK, social networking sites are costing businesses a loss of 1.4 billion pounds a year.

That's according to a survey released this week. It's because employees are "tweeting" or "poking" for up to 40 minutes a week -- meaning a reduction in productivity and for some, damage to the company brand.

IT firm, Morse, conducted the survey.

PHILIP WICKS, TECHNICAL CONSULTANT, MORSE SAYING:

"So it isn't just something you can do for half an hour during a lunch break but all through the day and because of that it has a huge impact because people aren't necessarily concentrating on what they should be doing during the day."

Companies across the world have banned access to such sites at work.

But accountancy firm Price Water House Coopers say using the sites can actually increase productivi

WILLIAM BEERS, DIRECTOR, PRICEWATERHOUSECOOPERS SAYING:

"So Instead of trying to shut it down, I think we should try to embrace these technologies, put in a nice policy that governs it and explain to users the risks related to it, provide some training and then see what business benefits we can have from it."

57 percent of employees in the survey admitted to using social networking sites at work.

But, does that mean it's the right thing to do?

UNIDENTIFIED EMPLOYEE:

"Certainly linked in on the professional level is a very useful tool in connecting with other professionals."

EMPLOYEE:

"If you want to spend time at the weekends on it or in the evenings fine, but I think most people are probably too busy, should be too busy to do it at work anyway."

The survey showed businesses have some way to go when it comes to guiding their workforce on site usage.

With increasing popularity of social networking sites both in and out of the office, policy on the occasional tweet or two looks sure to be high on company agendas.

Suranjana Tewari, Reuters.