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It seems that employees who spend their work time uploading status updates, posting up amusing photos and Tweeting about the minutiae of their boring work days are costing British businesses billions.

An hour a day keeps the ennui away

A survey by the UK employment website MyJobGroup.co.uk involving 1,000 employees found that nearly six percent of working Brits were partial to spending over an hour every day on social media.

That adds up to over two million people happily frittering away more than one eighth of their working days, when they should – apparently – be doing something far less interesting for The Man.

Billions of pounds lost. Possibly.

“Our results clearly show that UK workers are spending increased time whilst at work on social media networks, which, left unchecked, could have negative repercussions on the productivity of many companies across the country,” insisted Myjobgroup.co.uk Managing Director Lee Fayer in a statement.

Fayer reckoned that the work time lost on social media networks like Facebook and Twitter could potentially be costing Britain up to 14 billion pounds, with productivity suffering as workers busied themselves with profile tweaks, ‘like’ button pressing and profile perusing.

A boot stamping on the human face, forever

“Whilst we’re certainly not kill-joys,” continued the joy-killing Fayer, “people spending over an hour per day in work time on the likes of Facebook and Twitter are seriously hampering companies’ efforts to boost productivity, which is more important than ever given the fragile state of our economy.”

“Companies would do well to monitor use of social networking sites during work hours and ensure that their employees are not abusing their freedom of access to these sites,” continued the joy-destroyer, determined to remove every last prospect of a worker livening their dull day.

[Reuters]

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