I suppose, to be fair to Myjobgroup.co.uk, it hedges a little on the real significance of this survey when it says that social media is costing the U.K. economy “up to” £14 billion in lost productivity. That “up to” leaves the company a lot of wriggle room: it means the true number could be a lot lower; even zero.
And I suppose, to be fair to Mashable.com, its headline reflects a little skepticism, since it is phrased as a question: “Is Social Media Costing the UK Billions in Worker Productivity?”
Myjobgroup.co.uk does not explain its calculation in the press release, but one assumes that it is based on two assumptions. The first is that every minute that people spend on social media would otherwise be spent productively. The second is that every minute spent on social media is itself unproductive.
There is no reason to believe either assumption is true. I’d certainly challenge the comments of Lee Fayer, managing director of Myjobgroup.co.uk, who says: “People spending over an hour per day in work time on the likes of Facebook and Twitter are seriously hampering companies’ efforts to boost productivity, which is more important than ever given the fragile state of our economy.”
You could substitute “talking” for “using social media” and make a case for forcing employees to wear a gag during working hours. I suspect that the impact on productivity would not be a positive one.
The fact is that there are many productive uses of Facebook and Twitter, as there are productive uses of other media. And this study makes no attempt to measure the “opportunity cost” of cutting employees off from conversation and information.
A hat-tip, by the way, to Alex Charraudeau at the LinkedIn “Social Media and Digital PR” group, for drawing my attention to this story.