City Inc loses Rs 1.4 cr annually to social networking during work hours: survey

According to the survey,three fourth of the city workforce admits that they access social networking sites during work hours for messaging,tweeting,commenting,uploading photographs and updating profiles. “24.9 per cent,which is one in four individuals,accesses social networking sites for 30 minutes per day,13 per cent,which is one in 10,do it for an hour a day and 7.8 per cent admitted that they log in for over two hours on social networking sites,” the report said.

Referring to the McKinsey Global Institute report dated April 2010,the survey says that the city has an annual GDP of $3,000 crore and going by the 2001 census,the city’s work population is estimated to be 30,35,378. The report calculates per head annual GDP to be Rs 4.39 lakh. “Going by the 7.8 per cent workforce which is 2,36,751 employees who access social networking sites for over two hours a day along with working hours per year excluding holidays,the calculation yields a productivity loss worth Rs 1.4 crore per annum,” said Fennel.

The survey reveals that Facebook remains the most popular website amongst Puneites followed by Orkut at 60 per cent and Twitter at 25 per cent. And 39 per cent of the surveyed organisations have social networking policy as a result of which only 43 per cent employees from larger organisations accessed social networking sites at work as against SMEs where,due to lack of such a policy,the percentage was 55 per cent. Only 27 per cent of SMEs have a social networking policy in place.

Treating this as an HR failure,captain C M Chitale,professor and former dean,Faculty of Management,UoP said,“Productivity and efficiency at workplace should be treated as the priority and human resource policies need to be restructured to curb such practices in organisations. Work hours should be work hours and leisure should not be mixed with productive time.”