The Trades Union Congress last week criticised the blocking of employee access to social networking sites such as Facebook, saying that workers should be able to visit them in their lunch hour. The organisation is hopelessly naive, as are the estimated 70 per cent of UK employers who have totally banned such sites - the TUC for believing that employees will log on only during a break and the companies for believing they can force the masses of bored employees to give their all. As Britain languishes in the productivity tables, we need a fundamental rethink about what really makes people work.

Amid all the news stories about stress and burnout, here once again we have a glimpse of the unspoken reality of the large office environment. Employers are blocking access to Facebook and to similar sites, such as MySpace, because they know from their research just how much time their workers are spending on them. Almost 40 per cent of internetuse in companies is non-work related.