more on banning web access at work

Companies can try to ban this sort of thing, of course, and they'll sometimes be able to succeed. But as access to the Internet becomes more widespread and routine, with cellphones and PDAs morphing into wearable computers... those sorts of intrusions will be seen as more and more, well, intrusive. ... And the more intrusive the policies seem, the harder it will be to attract bright, creative employees who are marketable elsewhere: Just the kind of people that companies ought to want to hire and to keep.

Ultimately, this issue isn't about employees but about management. Managers tend to resist output measures because output measures require managers to take uncomfortable action: They have to tell the good employees that they're doing a good job (which tends to encourage the good employees to want more money) and they have to tell the bad employees that they're doing a bad job (which tends to make them resentful and unpleasant). Nonetheless, I think that measuring the work done, rather than just whether employees manage to look busy, is going to be the management trend of the future. Success in business, after all, usually has little to do with whether managers are comfortable or not.*