Social networking sites cause 12.5% loss in office productivity: Survey
23 December, 2009
According to a survey by Assocham (The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India), an average corporate employee in India spends an hour every day on social networking sites such as Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace for personal use during the office hours, leading to a loss of about 12.5 per cent of employees’ productivity in the country’s corporate sector.
An interesting finding of the survey states that 73 per cent of corporate employees aged 45-58 spend over an hour online daily to use online sources to access news. The survey further reveals that 84 per cent of internet users in metropolitan cities show signs of internet addiction -- they don’t take breaks and can get irritable if they are interrupted while surfing.
It was also found that 19 per cent of companies allow use of social networking sites only for business purposes, while 16 per cent allow their limited personal use. Only 40 per cent of the employees interviewed said their companies allow employees full access to social networking sites during work hours.
According to Assocham, the findings are based on a survey of about 4,000 corporate employees in the age group 21-60 years in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Cochin, Indore, Ahmedabad, Surat, Mumbai, Pune, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Lucknow and Kanpur. The survey was conducted by Assocham Social Development Foundation (ASDF) during September-November 2009.
Indian companies generally have longer working hrs and also working weekends regularly, As people do not get time to socialise personally, they do that on their computer, which hogs major time of the day.
Proactive approach needs to be taken here rather than reactive.
Also in the service industry, u cannot force people to deliver quality work, u need to be more understanding and work towards a common goal.
Quite an interesting study. Surely there should be a restriction on the amount of use rather than these sites being totally blocked coz nowadays people are very much addicted to these sites. these employees should be dealt with in the same way as companies deal with smokers :) am sure they give them time to smoke for a while outside office and get back to work.
maybe offices should use this addiction as an incentive.... something like... you finish your work early and then surf social networking sites for the remaining time. what say? :)
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