The research, conducted by Computerweekly.com, also found that 63 per cent of companies wanted to monitor employees’ use of the sites or limit access during working hours.
The news follows a warning from Global Secure Systems (GSS) and Infosecurity Europe, which claims that the runaway success of the websites is costing the British economy GB pound 6.5bn a year in lost productivity.
Each of the 776 people questioned said they spent at least 30 minutes on the websites every work day. Some respondents admitted surfing them for up to three hours every day.
David Hobson, managing director of GSS, thinks social networking sites have become ‘integral’ to the way many young workers communicate.
“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,” he said.
According to one FTSE100 company’s chief information security officer (CISO), Facebook consumed 30 per cent of all bandwidth before it was banned. The firm is now said to be turning its attention to Myspace and eBay, which take up a further 10 and five per cent of bandwidth respectively.
Claire Sellick, event director at Infosecurity Europe, said policy decisions regarding the use of social networking sites have caused a lot of internal pushing and shoving in some companies.
“It would appear that most CISO and IT Directors loathe social networking sites and if they had their way would ban them completely, but what is also coming across loud and clear is that the HR departments actually welcome the use of these sites,” she said.
Hobson added, “It comes down to a fine balancing act – and mostly a case of introducing a reasonable use policy.”
