Has your office banned Google?

Nearly three quarters of UK workplaces (74%) restrict their employees' access to the Internet, according to a recent survey by office design company Maris Interiors. 71% of offices surveyed have a filter for pornographic websites, with 52% of employees unable to access social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook and 48% of employees unable to access their personal email.
 
YouTube was blocked by 30% of employers, and news websites by 27%. 9% of offices only allow access to certain specific sites, and 4% only allow staff to use the company's intranet not even allowing search engines such as Google.  
 
Of those employees who have restrictions in their Internet access, 30% claim they say this makes their job more difficult and 82% say it makes their job more boring! Only 6% of employees surveyed said that they actually think it helps with their productivity at work.
 
Maris Interiors Chairman Michael Howard said "It's a difficult decision about blocking websites in the workplace by doing so you have to balance employees' productivity against their morale. At our company we restrict access to pornographic sites hopefully this doesn't affect their morale too much!"