Tony Molloy, from the Bolton Citizens Advice Bureau in the UK, forwarded the latest issue of ILM Newsroom, the online publication from the UK’s Institute of Leadership & Management. The juxtaposition of three articles grabbed my attention.

The first one—the article that prompted Tony to send the site my way—reports that “More than two thirds of employers have banned or restricted the use of Facebook and other social networking sites amid fears that staff are wasting time at work.”

More Londoners (826,000) are registered as Facebook members than any other city, and one study found that British users spend 191 minutes per month on the site. That averages out to less than 6.5 minutes per day. Still, Transport for London, British Gas, the Metropolitan Police, Lloyds TSB and Scotland Yard are among the organizations that have put filters in place to keep employees from visiting the site. A Scotland Yard representative said, “Access to some of these sites is blocked as there is no business need for employees to visit them.”

Well, except for the ability to network with other employees, potential customers, strategic partners, and people whose knowledge can prove an advantage in your work. Other than that, there’s no business need for employees to visit them.

Which leads to the second article, which reports on a survey that found nearly half of UK employees believe their managers make poor decisions. They blame incompetence and lack of confidence for the bad decisions.

Bad decisions like, maybe, blocking Facebook and other social networks?

The survey respondents thought their own bosses were fine; it’s the higher-ups that earned their derision. One particularly interesting finding revealed that 51% of senior managers believe they solicit employee input before making a decision, only 22% of employees agreed.

Perhaps soliciting employee decisions about blocking social networks would have uncovered business reasons to leave the sites unblocked. Alas, it’s easier to jerk one’s knee.

Neville reported today on a study suggesting that Facebook is costing Australian businesses $5 billion a year in lost productivity. Of course, these numbers are calculated using the same absurd approach that companies like Websense use to heighten paranoia in support of the purchase of their site-blocking software. Here’s the formula:

So let’s say the average worker is earning $25 per hour (for a salary of about $50,000 per year—I’m not going to mess with conversion to British pounds for this speculative argument). Multiply that by the number of Londoners with Facebook accounts (which is ridiculous, since not all of them are employees, but this is just for the sake of argument), and you come up with $20,650,000 in “lost productivity” for businesses in the city of London for every hour employees spend on Facebook. Multiply that by the total number of hours they spend on Facebook (assuming all those hours are spent at work), and you wind up with “lost productivity” approaching half a billion dollars a year.

One of my big questions in these decisions to block social networks, blogs, and other sites is whether time is, in fact, being wasted. The measure of productivity, particularly in knowledge jobs, is whether work is getting done, whether it’s getting done on time, and whether the quality of the work meets or exceeds the employer’s expectations. If I spend 20 minutes on Facebook at work, then spend an hour doing work in my living room in the evening or stay an hour late at work, the net result is still the same. (We won’t get into the effect of lack of management trust in employees on levels of employee engagement.)

All of which may be supported by yet another survey: Brits evidently believe time at work should be used primarily for work purposes. The third article from the ILM Newsroom looks at a study that determined “almost one in five employees think lunch breaks are for wimps with some not even taking any time out during their working day.”

The ILM Newsroom reports “that while this might appear to be a bonus for Britain’s bosses, working without any breaks can prove detrimental to employees’ health and wellbeing.”

God forbid that break should take place on Facebook or another social network where employees might actually bring the benefits of networking back to the workplace. And God further forbid that supervisors should deal with employees wasting time; it’s so much easier to simply not trust everybody, isn’t it?

So let’s review:

• Companies are blocking employee access to social networks without doing the homework required to determine whether their fears of wasted time are justified
• Most employees think it’s important to work hard to the point that they skip lunch in order to get more work done and not be viewed as a wimp
• Most employees think their leaders make stupid decisions

Yep, that about covers it.