That's Right, Blame The Web....

WARSAW (Reuters) - Poland's national police headquarters has banned officers from using a popular social networking site similar to Facebook because they were spending too much time using it, a newspaper said Monday.

Every time something like this happens I wonder the following:

• Where were these officers' supervisors?

and

• If the job performance didn't suffer, why does it matter?
• If the job performance did suffer, blocking the site will not address the behavior. It will just move the behavior

People can slack without texting on their cell phones, people can be distracted or unfocused without being on the phone (flashbacks of NO PERSONAL CALLS jobs), people can do less work than you want even if you time their bathroom breaks. The Internet is nothing new. It's just another distraction in a long line of distractions.

There are thousands of books on motivating and inspiring employees. Motivated and inspired employees might just use Twitter during the day, but they might also move mountains, and then you won't care.