13 per cent of employees say they spent 45 minutes or more on the site each day, according to a new study.

Over 47 per cent of business owners were somewhat concerned by the length of time their staff spent reading their twitter feed, new research finds. A further 15 per cent identified themselves as very concerned about the time spent by employees on the social networking site.

Employers have also raised concerns that the use of twitter streaming programs, such as ‘Tweet Deck’ - which provides continuous twitter updates - has led to a fall in office productivity.

Time spent on Twitter

In the same survey by Deal Jungle office workers were asked to answer, ‘honestly’, how much work time they spend on their personal twitter account. Whilst a majority of 63 per cent openly admitted to briefly using twitter at work, only 13 per cent confessed to spending 45 minutes or more on the site.

However, as a spokesperson from Deal Jungle explained: "Nobody likes to admit that they are slacking at work, so this figure may be much higher. Therefore it is very difficult to place an exact figure on the amount of time the average worker spends on twitter.

"A conservative estimate from our research would be, generally speaking, 20 minutes is lost per employee per day to twitter. For a relatively small company with 30 employees this equates to a loss of 50 hours a week."

Between a rock and a hard place

One businessman commented: "We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Yes, we would like to ban staff from using twitter during office hours; however, with the social networks now becoming such a powerful advertising tool it would be commercial suicide to do so.

"Another problem we are facing is the blurring of personal and professional relationships in the office. For example we have had cases of people phoning in sick but then tweeting about going to the shops. For colleagues who follow that person on twitter, this then puts them in a very difficult position."