What is Facebook costing your business?

Employee social networking is costing UK employers an estimated 14 billion a year in lost working hours.

After a Tory Party Councillor was arrested for a tweet and with employees' social ne ...

Employee social networking is costing UK employers an estimated £14 billion a year in lost working hours.

After a Tory Party Councillor was arrested for a tweet and with employees' social networking habits costing UK employers billions, it is time that businesses realise the real dangers of social networking in the workplace.

According to a recent MyJobGroup study, over half of the UKs workforce could be trying to check and update their social networking sites in work.  As a result social networking has become one of the biggest and most dangerous time wasting activities in the workplace.

One tweet or post on a site such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube or LinkedIn could be shared or viewed by hundreds or thousands of people around the world within a couple of days or even hours.

Last week Tory Party Councillor Gareth Compton realised just how powerful the world of social networking was.
His one ill-conceived tweet about a Muslim journalist received world-wide media coverage, got him arrested, suspended from the Tory party and branded a racist.

Today unmanaged social networking like this is costing companies' valuable man hours, putting their reputations at risk and when done on a company's computer, opening them up to attacks from hackers.
Stephen McPeake, Barclay Communications' IT Services Manager and Microsoft Professional outlines the four biggest risks social networking poses to businesses and how to combat them.

Risk 1: Lost Productivity

In August the MyJobGroup survey revealed that UK employees social networking habits were costing the UK economy as much as £14bn a year in lost working hours.
While an earlier "Wasting Time At Work" survey by survey.com revealed that employees with unrestricted social networking access could waste as much as two hours a day on sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

Stephen McPeake commented "Consider an employee on minimum wage, working an 8 hour day, but wasting two hours of that on social networking. In the end that one employee could cost a company up to £3,000 a year in lost working hours."

Risk 2: Attacks From Hackers

Today hackers are successfully targeting Facebook users with a number of emails, links, videos or applications that include damaging software.

 "Social networking is one of the newest and most effective ways for hackers to gain entry into peoples computers." Stephen McPeake continued.  "They pose as trusted friends or connections and then send you a private message recommending a site, video or link. Since they are your "friend" you think nothing of viewing, opening or even downloading whatever they are recommending."

Recently such scams have stolen Facebook user,  logins, private information and infected their computer with viruses.

Risk 3: Data Leaks

In an instant an employee could accidentally or intentionally post confidential company information on their private or the company's own Facebook or Twitter page.
In September the Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) realised this and distributed a social networking guide to warn employees about the data security risks involved with social networking. They also asked them to not publish any content about London 2012.

Last month many German companies, such as VW and Porsche were so afraid that their employees would give away trade secrets and be less productive with social networking sites that they completely blocked them.

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