Social Networking Costs UK plc £6.5billion pa - 01-Feb-08
Yes - £6.5 billion per annum - that is the calculated cost in productivity terms and bandwidth usage wasted by employees maintaining their social contacts during working time. This latest survey was carried out on behalf of IT security specialists Global Secure Systems.
The figure is calculated on the basis of 30 minutes per day (or three working weeks per annum) estimated by the survey. And does the calculation account for salary payments one must ask?
At the same time a poll of corporate security professionals estimated that up to 20 per cent of corporate bandwidth was being misappropriated in this fashion. As you can imagine, the security pro's would favour a complete ban on social networking activity during the working day.
Amusing to note, therefore, that some non-profits are actively seeking to utilise social network sites as a means of viral marketing - spreading the word about a cause or campaign - whilst at the same time, the medium is biting back as staff employ the tools for personal use.
David Hobson MD of GSS, said, "Social networking sites are now integral to the way that many of the latest and youngest recruits into the workforce communicate and work, so for some sectors social networking sites may have a part to play in terms of competitive advantage or used for research or as a marketing tool. It comes down to a fine balancing act - and mostly a case of introducing a "reasonable use" policy."
GSS claims to have saved thousands of pounds a year by practicing what they preach by limiting access to Facebook and other social networking sites on its company network with Internet filtering software.
"Our Internet bandwidth requirements recently came up for review and it was suggested we would need an upgrade, costing a few thousand pounds more a year," said David Hobson, managing director of GSS.
"After analysing the traffic patterns, however, we realised that around 25 per cent of our Web usage was for social networking sites such as Facebook. After locking down this traffic and just allowing staff to view these sites during their lunch hour or after work, we found we didn't actually need to upgrade our bandwidth after all and have saved a considerable amount in the upgrade costs!" he added.
Source: NFP Techno
|
|
|
|
