Overall, the numbers show that workers aren’t huge advocates for their companies, something that's not surprising in this economy but that also can’t be helping companies overcome the tough market.

“It’s entirely possible that the struggling economy has kept disgruntled workers in their jobs longer than normal, artificially depressing scores at the time we did this study (July/August),” writes Brown.

About a quarter of respondents were deemed promoters (those who marked down 9 or 10 on  a scale of 0-10) and almost half were deemed detractors, with the rest neutral on the matter of product/service recommendations. On job recommendations, the numbers were about the same, though there were a few less detractors.

The numbers vary based on location and job level: North American workers are three times as likely to advocate as European ones.  Senior managers are the strongest advocates and customer service employees are among the greatest detractors – obviously not a good thing for people interacting directly with customers.

In North America, about half of the workers who use social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and the like are promoters vs. only about a third who don’t use such tools.  Some 42% of users at work were advocates vs. 30% of non-smartphone users, and 39% of those using the Internet after work for business are advocates vs.29% who don’t, Forrester found. Though Brown did point out to IT pros who are Forrester’s clients: “As IT professionals who are presumably in love with technology, you actually buck the trend” by not being strong advocates, like employees in HR, finance and sales.