Over three-quarters of IT professionals in Europe do not believe there is anything wrong with taking care of life while at work, according to a recent survey by online recruitment firm The IT Job Board.

The poll of tech staff across the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands found that 76 per cent of UK and Belgian staff, and 82 per cent of Dutch respondents, felt no guilt about performing personal tasks during the working day.

About half of those surveyed in each region said they made personal phone calls from the office, while 61 per cent of UK tech staff, 63 per cent in Belgium and 54 per cent in the Netherlands admitted to sending non-work related emails.

It seems that the vast majority spend up to 30 minutes a day surfing the internet for personal reasons.

Although social networking sites are often blamed for wasting time at work, the survey revealed that webmail services such as Yahoo and Hotmail are much bigger resource hogs than the likes of Facebook.

In the UK, 10 per cent of respondents use Facebook, while 40 per cent use Hotmail and Yahoo. These figures are five per cent and 49 per cent respectively in Belgium, and three per cent and 40 per cent in the Netherlands.

When asked why they used work time for personal tasks, fewer than one in five tech workers were willing to admit that it was because they did not have enough to do. Roughly half said it was because they felt underpaid for the work they do.

"This is the first time that we have compared results across the various regions in which The IT Job Board operates," said Teresa Sperti, marketing manager at the company.

"The results highlight some interesting similarities as well as differences between the activities and opinions of IT professionals in different countries. "

Despite this reliance on work time to get their personal lives in order, around two thirds of respondents said that companies should be able to manage or block access to certain web sites.