Social Media at Work Costing UK Economy £14 Billion a Year?

A strong statement to make wouldn’t you agree? MyJobGroup.co.uk doesn’t seem to think so after publishing their recent survey results.

Operation of the largest network of regional jobsites in the UK is undertaken by MyJobGroup.co.uk, who recently surveyed 1000 workers in the UK and found that 6% of those surveyed spent over an hour a day on social media sites while at work.

The results are fine, but MyJobGroup.co.uk then decided to equate their 6% of 1000 UK workers surveyed into 6% of the UK’s entire working population! Further creative licence was taken on the results to come to the conclusion that two million workers wasting time on social media for an hour a day could be causing a £14 billion loss in work time!

To quote the press release…

“The survey also revealed that more than half (55 per cent) of the UK’s working population now accesses social media whilst at work, with a third of those (roughly six million) spending more than 30 minutes on the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Myspace.”

Spending more than 30 minutes on social media could be done quite easily on the standard one hour lunch break most workers receive. So, a bit more scare mongering and creative licence once more.

Procrastination has been around far longer than social media, the human race will inevitably always find ways of not doing what they should be, that’s just the way it is. Making a mountain out of a molehill seems to be the fashion as far of social media at work goes.

MyJobGroup.co.uk thought that using 1000 peoples survey results as solidly indicative of the social media use of the 34 million people working in the UK is ludicrous at best.

When it comes to social media and polls / surveys, people seem to forget that reliable results for an entire population can’t be gathered when you fail to survey even a whole 1% of the population.

MyJobGroup.co.uk recommend monitoring the use of social networking sites during company hours, which could make employees more inclined to use smartphones and even spend longer on the sites.