Twitter timewasters

A NEW study has revealed that 13% of employees spend at least 45 minutes on the micro-blogging site each day. As a result, 47% of big bosses said that they were concerned about the time spent on the site, reading through various and random tweets.

The survey was conducted by Deal Jungle and stated that a further 15 per cent identified themselves as very concerned about the time spent by employees on the social networking site.

However, as a spokesperson from Deal Jungle explained: “Nobody likes to admit that they are slacking at work, so this figure may be much higher. Therefore it is very difficult to place an exact figure on the amount of time the average worker spends on twitter.

“A conservative estimate from our research would be, generally speaking, 20 minutes is lost per employee per day to twitter. For a relatively small company with 30 employees this equates to a loss of 50 hours a week.”

One businessman commented: “We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Yes, we would like to ban staff from using twitter during office hours; however, with the social networks now becoming such a powerful advertising tool it would be commercial suicide to do so.

“Another problem we are facing is the blurring of personal and professional relationships in the office. For example we have had cases of people phoning in sick but then tweeting about going to the shops. For colleagues who follow that person on twitter, this then puts them in a very difficult position.”