Do YOU use Facebook at work?

A growing number of employees are using Facebook as an alternative e-mail at work, slipping past cyber security controls — and possibly violating company policies, a study has found. Nearly half of employees in the study — and more than 75 percent of those with an account — use Facebook at work, some for up to an average of two hours a day.

Jerry DeMarco

08/07/2009 2:13 p.m.

Three of every 100 respondents said they use Facebook only at work, meaning that’s where they build and maintain their profiles.

The companies lost 1.5 percent of total employee productivity as a result, the study concludes.

“Traditional e-mail and even personal accounts like gmail can be monitored by corporate IT, while Facebook messages are not,” the Nucleus Research firm reports.

Nucleus interviewed 237 workers chosen at random. On average, they access Facebook about 15 minutes per day.

A whopping 87% of them couldn’t define a clear business reason for doing so. The 13% of users who could weren’t involved in personal networking but in promoting a business, product, event or fan site on Facebook as part of an overall marketing strategy.

Source: Nucleus Research, July 2009

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