Bosses across the UK are taking advice from Dragon Den’s star Theo Paphitis and banning Facebook in the workplace, according to one of the country’s leading employment law specialists.

The popular judge on the hit BBC show – and one of the country’s most successful entrepeneurs - spoke out last week and called for company chiefs to follow his lead and ban workers from using social networking sites. And according to Employment Law Advisory Services (ELAS) hundreds of bosses have done just that.

Peter Mooney, Head of Consultancy at ELAS, insists the company has been inundated over the past week by employers seeking ways of clamping down on sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

He says: “Theo Paphitis is a hugely successful businessman and when he talks people listen. We’ve had calls from hundreds of bosses asking for our advice on how to deal with this ongoing problem.

“And it is a real problem, with figures suggesting hundreds of million pounds worth of productivity is being lost every day because workers are logging on to these networking sites. “

Many employers are also concerned that some staff are actually addicted to Facebook. With some even asking if they might have to start introducing ‘Facebook breaks’, just like they do with smokers.

“But we’ve been telling them the best thing to do is simply update their company policy, with a line banning social networking sites during office hours, and to make employees aware of the change.

 “Of course this has been a problem for some time now but following Theo Paphitis’ comments we’ve seen a sharp rise in the number of enquiries. “After all, who can argue with his record?” 

Also last week Portsmouth City Council banned their staff from using Facebook after it was discovered workers were logging onto the site up to 270,000 times a month. It's so important to handle any situation like this very carefully and ELAS are here to guide you through with their expert employment law advice.

 And Peter Mooney insists staff will get sacked if they breach any ban. 

He says: “If you ban something in the office and workers ignore that ban, that’s an act of gross misconduct which is punishable by instant dismissal.

“And then you’d have all day to spend on Facebook.” 

For more information about the scheme or for any other employment law advice, please call ELAS on 0161 785 2000 

Visit www.employment-law.uk.com for more information.