Facebook ban for Birmingham City Council workers

Jan 20 2009 by Ben Hurst, Birmingham Mail

COUNCIL bosses today imposed a ‘Facebook ban’ after a shock study found highly paid officials were wasting hundreds of hours by chatting to friends when they should have been working.

A surveillance exercise showed Facebook to be the fourth most popular website for employees, with 610 hours of browsing time in a month.

The BBC website topped the list, with 912 hours. Two google sites were in second place.

Other popular viewing included Sky Sports, Heart FM, wikimedia and auctioneering site eBay.

Now the council’s entire workforce has been barred from using social networking sites between 10am and noon and 2pm to 4pm.

The survey looked at browsing time during core working hours. But when the entire council day, including meal breaks are taken into account, another social networking site, youtube, climbs into the top 50 of most viewed websites.

The study also identified council staff who use the internet most.