There we go again.
The Telegraph has published an article about some survey which claims social networks such as Twitter are costing British businesses at the very least £1.38 billion (approx. $2.25 billion) a year.
Shocking findings, I daresay!
Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could actually be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.
How about we settle for a gazillion?
Where does that number come from, you ask? The £1.38bn estimate is based on a survey that showed more than half of office workers use social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook for personal use during the working day, and admit wasting an average of 40 minutes a week each. A veritable productivity hole, adds a Morse consultant who – like so many before him – fails to capture that there’s a difference between being productive and ‘not wasting time’.
I’d like to see more research in this field, but more focused on office workers who spend the majority of their day staring out the windows, yapping about last night’s television highlights with coworkers in the coffee and/or smoking room, attending meetings where no decision or progress gets made, or simply working on stuff that’s not particularly considered to be productive for their employer, the British economy as a whole, or the rest of planet Earth.
What I hate about these surveys is how they focus on what people seem to be doing when they are supposedly ‘wasting their time’ and singlehandedly destroying the British economy with all their tweeting and liking on Facebook, instead of why people are seemingly not motivated enough to leave the social interaction for those periods of time outside of the official business hours. My guess: more enticing headlines this way.
Maybe it’s just the concept of ‘business hours’ that isn’t something the new generation of office workers is apt at dealing with, considering they grew up living in a fragmented world where social media make up integral parts of their lives that cannot simply be turned off. Perhaps it’s a cultural thing or a management problem, but one thing it is most definitely not: the fault of Twitter or Facebook.
Or do you really think that guy next to you who spends hours staring at his Facebook news feed is suddenly going to be way more productive when the IT department blocks access to the site?
One more survey to ignore, move along now, nothing to see here.
(Hat tip to Daniel Joerg – on Twitter)
“One more survey to ignore, move along now, nothing to see here.”
Exactly.
Office hours are so ‘95, and Twitter is “office hours” material for us anyways.
ah right. and how much money did they waste on this ‘research’?
Unknown, but since it was commissioned by a company that “drives cost and efficiency improvements throughout the technology infrastructure and IT asset lifecycle”, I think the appropriate question is: who has most to gain by feeding the press enticing headlines based on non-research?
WebSpy?
“ah right. and how much money did they waste on this ‘research’?”
Survey cost : £1.10b
Money lost because of Twitter at work : £0.28b
—————
Total of money loss because of Twitter : £1.38b
If not for Twitter/Facebook, employees would find (have found) other ways to waste time.
On the bright side, with these distraction you have a chance of accurately quantifying the amount of time wasted.
- Sri
indeed, if locked in a metal box with the options of work, picking my nose or scratching myself, you can damn well bet I’ll go gold digging at least a couple of times a day.
There are people who spend their life not doing work, and normally a quick check of browser logs will show them up pretty quickly. But most companies just don’t care, if you’re getting the work done you’re paid to do, they’re generally smart enough not to suddenly cut off every possible thing that could consume time outside of work. That would be the really expensive thing to do, because soulless zombies aren’t good at thinking on their feet.
While there are time wasters out there, the whole concept of ‘time wasting’ by distracting one’s mind is hogwash.
People aren’t robots and therefore can’t do ‘work’ constantly with regimented ‘breaks’. We just aren’t wired that way, doesn’t matter how long you can concentrate on something or how well you multitask.
You just can’t. The End.
I’m sorry but these statistics are a complete load of nonsense, surely what is really costing is whoever people are paying to sit down for weeks on end to think these things up, if anything I find twitter extremely useful during my working day I’m always finding out about new blog posts and tutorials regarding new web development and design techniques, which are invaluable to my job.
As a past employer of many people in many different countries, I have found the only way to measure and ensure productivity is through goal setting and results ( = rewards). However many bosses see it as hard work setting KPI´s and would rather just ban things that could distract in the hope of their employees will deliver results for them with a limited amount of input from their side.
To be fair, most jobs are boring. That’s just life. It’s not possible for every job to be so wonderful and interesting that even the lure of Twitter isn’t enough to tear people away from their tasks.
If I didn’t use social networks, how would I find clients? :S
Is reading about this survey bad for the economy too? Cause I just wasted 5 minutes reading about it.
I sell rugs, i may write to The Telegraph saying UK companies £10billion a year each if they have a rug in the office. If they print this, surely they’ll print my rug claim?
ok…
so you’re making the point that it should be ok to do the twit/facebook/mysqpace/etc.. thing doing hours that you’re supposed to be paid for contributing to generating revenume/profits.. or are you saying that because people will blow time on other things, that it’s ok to blow time on these things as well…
either way.. if you have this opinion, i’m sure you’d have no issue when i tell you that on the weekend/off time, i’ll hit you up to do work for the company.. if you can infringe/waste the work time, i surely should be able to get you to do work on your off time…
looking forward to how this is answered…
peace..
I’m saying it’s stupid to think people can possibly be concentrated 100% on work for 8+ hours every day, and it’s even more stupid to try and blame a very specific activity people do when they’re not ‘generating revenue’ instead of just pointing out that human nature is what it is.
The misconception that these “researchers” and you have is that you are paid by your employer to “spend hours” (your words).
You are not paid to “spend hours”. At least, I make that assumption. If you are, I want your job.
You are paid to PRODUCE. The hours are irrelevant. Measuring the expenditure of hours is stupid.
Thanks Robin, this is a fab post, and glad to see someone responding to the ridiculous articles and calculations on failed productivity. As i’ve noted elsewhere, trips to the toilet cost businesses several billion a year, and outdated PCs that crash and take ages to load an application cost even more, if you start to look at every activity. There’s also an assumption that no learning occurs when people visit these social media. It’s about time someone showed up these articles for the idiocy they are. Thanks and keep up the good work!
Riding on twitter publicity bandwagon … these newspapers , I hate them …who told them to do tech news …its like making the apple go from ground and stick to the tree on its own .They misguide ppl …sore A**es .Infact there should be some legislation in public interest banning the same.
Let ppl who understand it do it , techcruch will you tell them what it means … even this I guess would be too technical for them .
I think there is more time wasted on personal phone calls and water-cooler chatter…..
You wrote:
“Morse, the IT services and technology company who commissioned the survey, said the true cost to the economy could actually be substantially higher than the £1.38bn estimate.”
Did you mean:
“Worse, …”?
That was a possibility
– but the company is actually called Morse.
I don’t understand that hype about twitter, but humans want to communicate fast und everywhere. So i guess there is no simple way to stop workers using twitter at work.
By the way: These “costs” are just estimated and in fact much lower than mentioned.
So the survey is wrong because *you* said so. good to know that.
91.43% of all statistics are made up. That’s a fact.
I thought it was about 63%. Interesting to know that its going up.
It’s the economy, the less research funding available the greater the “pulled that number from our collective ass” percentage. Who can afford to pay for actual research these days?
There’s a 91.43% chance that 63% of all statistics are made up!
When employers decide that workers nights and weekends are out of bounds for work, maybe workers will start caring what non-work activities are appropriate during “business hours.” Any time spent by workers on personal social media just brings a little karma to the work week…
Amazing, how the practise of tying productivity to time spent still persists in this (supposedly) enlightened time. All manner of things are justified through this methodology, and all manner of things are condemned as well.
I am reminded of a conversation:
“So, why did you buy this expensive automatic pool cleaner?”
“It save me time. I used to spend 2 hours a week cleaning the pool.”
“And what are you doing with those two hours now?”
I would have posted a comment on the Telegraph’s website but there was no way of connecting a link to my website. Why then would I waste my time? Funny how newspapers are just not “getting it.” They seem to believe that by keeping the reader on their page they will gain more readers in the long run. Wrong! The exact opposite is true. As for the survey, they seem to neglect to mention proper analysis as carried out by the likes of Gartner in this area.
I have to wonder, while there is certainly this “issue” of employees using Twitter, Facebook, et al at work, what kind of revenues are being generated by offering companies a new way to market themselves? Surely a big company full of intelligent people can come up with a way to leverage all the social media contacts their employees invariably have… right?
Socially Goofing Off > Staring Out Window
Although it is stupid to assume that people can stay focused on work eight hours in a row, and to forget that daydreaming, napping, and other forms of “downtime” can actually help productivity, there is no denying that social networking tools can be, in many cases, an invitation to slack that is too hard to resist. Thus, it is important to establish a policy of use throughout the day for oneself and stick to it if possible, so as to be able to be more focused and thus more efficient. Obviously, there are some types of work (public relations, sales, etc.) where social networking tools should indeed be considered productivity tools.
was it another IDC or Gartner survey?
This “survey” caught my attention today as well, so I had to post about it in much the same vain as yourselves: http://www.cloudmixer.com/social-media-costs-business-economy-billions/
My question is, and like many who have commented, if it costs billions then is it worth billions? Maybe businesses need to stop “banning” these tool and leverage them as folks here have said.
Stupid survey. On the same pretence if “looking out the window is costing billions”, ban that, cover the windows with curtains inevitably leading to a survey claiming that “curtains cost the economy billions” so ban that, which leads to yet another survey saying “vacant staring into space costs the economy billions” at which point they start to wonder if they can ban that or maybe just poke peoples eyes out instead, or operate on their brains or such…
silly.
I occasionally use Twitter and FB at work, occasionally, but I’ll make a deal with my employer. I promise that during the hours of 9-5 I will only work and not to be unproductive, if they, in-turn, promise that I only have to work 9-5 and that I’m no longer expected / nor is it a job requirement, for me to work extra hours (as per-norm), or weekends.
It doesn’t go both ways, ‘ya know.
This “survey” is just a publicity stunt riding on twitter’s popularity in the media.
Another survey to ignore? Sure. I could, of course, equally ignore this article since it has no real point. It’s hardly the first voice heard to defend internet distractions during work time.
In addition, yes, I have no just wasted your time (and mine) further by leaving this comment…
LOL, I think I spend at least 40 minutes a day on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
Oh boy, not another one from the “british scientists have discovered” series… Go Twitter!
I have a very simple solution for the 8 workers at my company. I have a program that takes screenshots and grabs URLs every 15 seconds. Then I send my workers a file every week that shows them where they spent their time. I don’t look at that file but I reserve the right to do so. It’s a nice little self-policing policy that reminds people that when you work for me, you’re on my time. And if they don’t like it, I can easily go through the hundreds of resumes that show up every time I post a job opening. I also have a policy that you can’t work on weekends either – even if you want.
Former surveys had mentioned Youtube, IM and email jokes. These time wasters haven’t disappeared either. Does it mean that there is simply no time left for work because all these weapons of mass distraction add up?
People waste time because there is no incentive to work hard. You only ever trade hours of your life for money. It never mattered what I accomplished. As long as I did enough not to get fired. Treat me well knowledge when I work hard (thanks, good job, more pay, etc). My employer never gave &%$# about me why should I care.
I would pose the question of how much business social networks (professional or not), twitter and the like ACTUALLY GENERATE for companies rather than how much money the waste.
In my case, it’s the opposite, social networks are a goldmine for business generation. So I think the survey is very old school weighing the wrong results and leaving out the important ones.
I don’t see how millions of public employees are digging a goldmine twittering. how they do that?
Well said! There are millions of people in offices across the country who send a lot of there day messing around on computers and generating absolutely no business for their employer. They are in dead end jobs and don’t give a fuck about the company they work for. This will come out in any tweets or status updates and in turn look bad for the employer. This will have the exact opposite effect of generating business/money.
People have spent years looking out the window and talking to their friends about last night, they will continue to do that but now they also have other things to do such as twitter, facebook, iPhones. This doesn’t replace talking to friends, it’s in addition to. The more we give people to do other than work the more they will take advantage. It’s just the way life is.
At then end of the day some of us are lucking and have jobs which interest them and we at times make good use of something like twitter but the millions of other people will use it as an alternative to work. This will cost their employer money. Fact.
What this article tells me is that people really should be doing what they love.
I’m actually developing software that monitors how much time people are using twitter, facebook etc as a way to increase productivity. Also software to help decrease the amount spent each day checking emails (lots of time wasted here also). Really a bit unfair to single out twitter as it’s only one thing out of many that people waste time on.
Just to throw a controversial comment out there … I think that people who waste a major amount of their time and are not effective are likely to lose their jobs to India in the next 10 years anyway where people are willing to work long hours for much lower pay.
But it’s also true that you can work extremely hard and supposedly not waste time, but it doesn’t make you productive. To be truly productive it’s not really a function of how many hours you put in but the effectiveness of your time spent.
I also use Facebook but not and Twitter, and mant other people who Iknow. And I think it is a wasting a time. First my sisters all day every day lost free time on facebook.
Using social networks often saves me hours of work by utilising the crowd for problems I face. Instead of pulling hair out for days, I ask the collective and often I get a couple tips.
Nevermind the fact that clients want cutting edge and how do you find out about that…?
Ridiculous survey.