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	Phil's Blogservations Tuesday, August 21, 2007 Posted by philgomes 9:14 AM Neville, Facebook, Australia, Coffee Neville, Facebook, Australia, Coffee Neville pointed me to an article about how Facebook is allegedly responsible for ghastly drops in Australian workplace productivity to the tune of $5 billion. Richard Cullen of SurfControl, an internet filtering company, estimates the site may be costing Australian businesses $5 billion a year. "Our analysis shows that Facebook is the new, and costly, time-waster," he said. The report calculates that if an employee spends an hour each day on Facebook, it costs the company more than $6200 a year. There are about 800,000 workplaces in Australia. I take these occasional "lost productivity" reports with a grain of salt. Firms like Challenger, Gray, and Christmas have turned such communications into PR gold, though. (Remember reports of "Wookie Hookie" during the release of the Star Wars prequels?) If people applied these methodologies to the average office coffeepot, they'll probably discover that the humble appliance results in six figures worth of lost productivity on a per-company, per-annum basis. You'd have to figure: One-time cost of machine. Recurring costs of grounds, filters, etc. Time spent using above to retrieve a cup of coffee or brew a pot, depending on the type of machine you have. Time spent chatting with colleagues. Travel time to-and-from desk. My Facebook account I can ignore for days at a time. I'm not willing to go without coffee. Technorati Tags: productivity, office, facebook | HOME | OBSESSIONS | FAQ | HEROES | CAREER | BLOG | CONTACT Note that the views expressed on this site do not necessarily reflect those of Phil's employer, its business partners, its clients, or anyone or anything that doesn't come from Phil's demented imagination. Hell, to be perfectly honest, even Phil disagrees with what he thinks sometimes. This site has virtually no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Clicking on a link doesn't automatically send a 1/2-cent donation to UNICEF. You can't buy, sell, auction, swap, find a date, win friends, influence people, cross the chasm, or decode the human genome using this site. You won't get free email. You won't win a free video game console. This site will not end world hunger, foster peace in the Middle East, help you smell better, teach you how to swing dance, or move the global economy from petroleum to hydrogen fuels. You'll learn a lot about this site's master, though, which amounts to a haphazard collection of strange and useless facts that pretty much won't help you at all.	ABOUT THIS BLOG This is the blog of Phil Gomes, SVP with Edelman Digital and senior advisor to the Society for New Communications Research. This blog not only discusses PR and media matters, but Phil's everyday observations about a variety of topics. Phil currently resides in Chicago, IL. EMAIL phil[at] philgomes.com View my page on PROpenMic SYNDICATE Feedburner ARCHIVE YAHOO! IM SKYPE WISH LIST PITCH POLICY MY PHOTOS www.flickr.com Photostream RSS Enter your Email Powered by FeedBlitz COMMENT AND TRACKBACK POLICY Comments and trackbacks are unmoderated, though I will delete the patently offensive ones. Any comments and trackbacks are the opinions of the individual writer of those comments and trackbacks, and not those of Phil Gomes, his employer, its clients, or its business partners. If you have a bone to pick, bug the people who wrote the comment or trackback.