According to the Confederation of British Industry, Facebook is public enemy #1 for office administrators around the globe.

For the uninitiated, the CBI is a lobbying group that operates on the behalf of employers in England. Their concern, first and foremost, is with minimizing the number of government-issued hurdles employers have to jump over to conduct business; the second is to maximize the efficiency of their employees.

Of course, everyone knows that the only good employee—in the eyes of an employer—is a lobotomized drone who answers to every beck and call from their supervisors. They punch the clock at 9:00am and don’t leave until every last soul-sucking task is complete. They don’t talk to their coworkers, and they certainly do not engage in time theft by cruising Facebook in-between assignments.

However, as we all know, that’s generally not the case; employees use sites like Facebook to break up the monotony of their everyday work life, and the CBI vehemently disapproves.

The highly opinionated, yet oftentimes hilarious Dailymash reports:

SOCIAL networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are distracting office workers from the hellish, brain-curdling reality that is their shabby, predictable and ultimately meaningless lives, according to a new report from the Confederation of British Industry.

The CBI is concerned that surfing the internet is preventing workers from reaching financial targets that will bring them no measurable benefits, but will swell executive bonuses by up to 220% a year.

As tongue-in-cheek as this argument may be, the truth is employers expect to get their money’s worth from their employees. If someone is spending an entire day commenting on Facebook statuses, that hardly seems right.

That said, a little commenting never hurt anyone, and it goes a long, long way towards keeping an employee sane—and preventing them from jumping out a window.

In short, lay off, CBI; Facebook is a necessity in the workplace, not an obtrusion.