+1 It probably is so much larger the companies do not wanting its staff to cut back.

Interesting point about the unpaid overtime. Perhaps social networking should be treated as a perk and given only to those who go above and beyond, after all there are many, many people out there who work their hours only and quite happily shirk at the same time.

So in fact employers have a net gain of some £13 billion. I think the CBI etc can STFU now.

I find that's generally a good default position to take, until evidence proves otherwise. So far, it never has.

Well if you are going to start comparing the figures then you should probably include other things that may appear innocuous, but are likely to amount to a fairly hefty sum. Stationery and other thefts, sick leave without illness etc.

I guess that it will all balance out.

Unfair/constructive dismissals, discrimination (be it sex, age or disability related), unpaid sick leave, denied holiday time...

Amongst workers there will always be a significant minority who take the piss in a variety of ways. Then there will be another minority who work far too hard and are extremely "productive". The majority of people fall in between these two groups.

That's why a flat policy is rather gay. But I understand that in larger organisations, they have to.

My company has blocked it, and I don't blame them. If I ran a company, I'd block social networking sites too.

How much of that unpaid overtime wouldn't be necessary, if the person wasn't skiving off during their normal working hours?

How many of the unpaid overtime hours are unnecessary, just the person "wanting to get it finished, before I go home"? There is no deadline, or the deadline is still atainable, but they decide they will finish it now, instead of in the morning? I've been guilty of doing that regularly.

On the other side, you are using (some employers would call it stealing) bandwidth, that costs money and, depending on available bandwidth, means that other users can't do legitimate work. It is one problem I've had at my current job, they have no restrictions in place, but the workers constantly complain, that the "server" is slow, in actual fact, the VPN connection between our head office and the remote sites isn't getting enough bandwidth, because the users on the remote site are streaming music or looking at videos etc.

As long as people don't take the p155 I agree totally.

I do have my own business. No internet other than two machines for the partners.thay can ask, and usually have access if there's nothing else to do or over lunch. When we're working, we're working

Mobile phones, can recieve texts but only answer/make calls when free of other duties.

+1

I my last few places of work I've used Facebook and accessed these forums, it hasn't affected my work, if there is work to be done then I'll do it. If there is nothing to do (and there are times when there is nothing to do, or when I'm waiting for something that will finished soon enough that I couldn't really start something else.

In fact, accessing the internet, these forums and Facebook has helped me complete my job at times, if I have a question about something I'll often post it here or maybe on Facebook and people will help answer it, I'm not saying that I couldn't have found the answer elsewhere, but social sites have helped me find the answer quickly.

Totally! Everybody works in their own way. Job performance is what needs to be measured. Not what else goes on.

As far as Facebook is concerned I'll spend about 1 min a day seeing if there are any messages but that's it. No [LIFTED] useless pretend farms or any of that [LIFTED] on my page.