The next time you see an employee hunched intently over the computer, don’t imagine he or she is slaving over the office accounts or a report for the next shareholders meeting. Employees are more likely to be whiling away the hours on the social networking site Facebook, a report says.
…
Richard Cullen of SurfControl, an internet filtering company, estimates the site may be costing Australian businesses $5 billion a year. “Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster,” he said.The report calculates that if an employee spends an hour each day on Facebook, it costs the company more than $6200 a year. There are about 800,000 workplaces in Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2007/08/19/1187462087940.htmlAlso see:
Facebook time-wasters could cost A$5 billion a year
Facebook could cost employers up to $5 billion a year in productivity. The rise of the “underground intranet” in workplaces has resulted in more time-wasting by employees.
http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22273758-2,00.html
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Facebook-costs-businesses-AU-5bn-SurfControl/0,130061733,339281297,00.htm
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=5&objectid=10458802