Facebook and Twitter cost UK business £1.4bn a year
We’ve talked plenty about how to effectively use Facebook and Twitter to effectively market your website. There’s no doubt that as a website owner these social networks offer a fantastic channel to reach out to new website visitors.
But what has been nagging at the back of every business owners’ mind is how much employees using social networking websites are costing them every day.
A survey from IT service provider Morse has tried to answer this question, by polling 1,460 workers on their use of social media during work hours.
The survey found that a whopping 57% of people spend 40 minutes every week on Facebook and Twitter whilst at work. Whilst we website builders want them to be using their social networks to market the company website, in actual fact its all for personal use. The estimated productivity lost from this has been put at £1.4bn a year.
And what are companies doing to plug this leak? The answer is ‘not a lot’. More than 75% of UK businesses have not issued guidelines on social media use.
Quite apart from the work time lost, unregulated use of social media by employees is also a potential brand accident waiting to happen. We’ve all ready about big company employees ridiculing ‘problem’ customers on Facebook, not realising that others could listen in to their conversation.
“Social media can be good for business, helping to extend ties with customers and employees, but organisations don’t seem to understand that it’s not being used predominantly for business but for personal use. This is a massive productivity black hole,” said Philip Wicks, a Morse consultant.
“Companies need to reinforce a corporate usage policy to ensure that people use their PCs responsibly and predominantly for business purposes.”
Do you think that this is another example of corporate Britain trying to stamp on the personal activities of employees? Have you any experience of social media indiscretions when discussing company issues? Leave us a comment below.