The site polled 1,000 UK workers on their social media behaviors at work and ultimately concluded that social media is costing the UK economy $14 billion in lost work time.
Fourteen percent of respondents also revealed that they were less productive as a result of their social media activities on sites like Twitter and Facebook, while 10% reported increased productivity with the help of social media.
There's no question that social media in the workplace is on the rise. A recent U.S. study by Cisco found that more than half of surveyed employees
Still, MyJobGroup's findings are a bit circumspect, if only in their generalization that 6% of their sample equates to 6% of the entire UK workforce.
The MyJobGroup stats are believable, but it is more reasonable to conclude that social media usage in the workplace is on the rise and becoming commonplace. As for lost productivity, we're pretty confident that those eating up company time on social networking sites were likely finding other ways to waste away an hour or more a day before the advent of Twitter and Facebook.
[via Reuters]