Loved up workers are costing businesses an astounding £10 billion a year.

This is according to HR experts Croner, which found that 37 per cent of people use communication lines at work, including the telephone and email, to conduct their personal relationships.

Office email systems were the most popular means of personal communication amongst the 1,198 British adult workers surveyed, with 22 per cent of respondents saying they had used them to conduct a personal or romantic relationship with their loved ones.

Work land-lines (21 per cent) came next in the list, with personal email accounts (18 per cent) and social networking sites (11 per cent) accessed via the office computer and work mobile phones (6 per cent) following on.

It’s men not women who are the main culprits, with 39 per cent admitting they use work communications to keep in touch with loved ones on a daily basis and, of these, 7 per cent admitted to doing so every single hour of the working day.

Workers in the capital and the south are the most likely group to be found on personal calls or emails, with their peers in Scotland least likely to be doing so – and whilst younger workers made greatest use of websites like Facebook and MySpace, their older colleagues are more likely to stick to more traditional means of communication.

Croner HR expert Gillian Dowling said: “Most employers will allow staff to make the odd personal call or send a few emails during the day within reason, but if they don’t set clear boundaries, the potential for company losses in terms of both time and money is almost limitless.”

In a warning to employees, Dowling said tempted employees should be aware that bosses might be monitoring their systems.

Earlier this week, HR Zone reported that romance at work is on the rise between colleagues.