Visiting sites like Facebook or YouTube while at work can make employees more productive, claims a new University of Melbourne study.

Dr. Brent Coker, from the Department of Management and Marketing, says that workers who engage in “Workplace Internet Leisure Browsing” (WILB) are more productive than those who don’t.

“People who do surf the Internet for fun at work – within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office – are more productive by about 9% than those who don’t,” he says.

“Short and unobtrusive breaks, such as a quick surf of the internet, enables the mind to rest itself, leading to a higher total net concentration for a days work, and as a result, increased productivity,” said Coker.

According to the study of 300 workers, 70 percent of people who use the Internet at work engage in WILB. The most popular WILB activities are searching for information about products, and reading online news sites. Playing online games was the fifth most popular, while watching YouTube was seventh.

“Firms spend millions on software to block their employees from watching videos on YouTube, using social networking sites like Facebook or shopping online under the pretense that it costs millions in lost productivity, however that’s not always the case,” said Coker.

Coker cautions that those with signs of Internet addiction, WILB can have a negative effect on productivity.

“WILB is not as helpful for this group of people – those who behave with Internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without,” he said.