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Not are, were. I no longer work for that company. I'm typing up more details in my reply to OP.

I never met the burden of proof that my HR team said was required if I wanted to write someone up. The company did not have appropriate spying tools to definitively prove that an employee had not actually typed anything in two hours even though their teams status was showing active. There was always the hypothetical, "I was at my desk but my phone was ringing non-stop with customer calls and that's why I couldn't answer this customer's 5 urgent e-mails over 3 hours."

I'm not saying that I wanted that kind of babysitting spyware installed. I absolutely did not. I don't believe in that sort of thing and wouldn't have wanted something like that installed on my computer for my bosses to spy on me.

To answer your question directly, I'm not an idiot. I'd call an employee's cell to ask why certain things had not been actioned yet and hear background noises that clearly did not come from a home office (traffic noise, wind, PA announcements, etc). My best guess is they would stop whatever they were doing, pull out their laptop for a few minutes to do whatever I was bugging them about and then disappear again. I'd call them out on it, but they knew there was nothing I could actually do so it didn't matter to them.

Most of the team were honest and diligent. They worked just as well at home as they did in the office and we never had any problems. But there are always people who know what they can get away with and will try to get away with as much as they can.

It wasn't so black and white. You'll see what I mean if you want to read my replies to other commenters.

I don't disagree with you. I changed jobs earlier this year. I took a hard look at my successes and failures at the last job. I really wanted to learn from my mistakes and be a better manager. I think I'm a lot better now at setting expectations and holding people accountable, or at least I'm trying to be.

Oh wow, I wasn't expecting to get so many passionate replies on a sub-comment. I'll provide some more context now that I'm not on mobile. TL/DR: I'm not the clueless asshole CEO you may think I am from my original comment.

My job is not in software, coding or similar. It's customer service for international logistics. Our field was hit especially hard by the pandemic rebound. Remember when you couldn't buy anything? I was on the front lines of that and it was insane. The current problems in the Red Sea are triggering a sort of PTSD. There are already shortages of empty containers in Asia because they're all on boats going around Africa. Shipping rates from Asia are growing geometrically the past couple weeks, and things will get a lot worse if ships can't safely transit the Suez Canal again soon.

Being customer service, the expectation is that we are available to customers during normal business hours to quickly process requests and resolve problems. There is nothing preventing the job being done remotely if you have the right people. We didn't have all of the right people. But to be fair, they weren't hired for a remote role. Like many jobs, we were full time in the office until March 2020.

I was not upper management setting policy. I was middle management. And I'm not pretending I'm the best manager. I was promoted from operations to build and lead a specialized team for our company's top accounts. My style leans toward hands off / lead by example. No task is beneath me and I back the team up 100%.

The stress and non-stop intensity of that job wore me down. I switched companies earlier this year to a role that was closer to home, less responsibility and a nearly 25% pay increase. When I called a meeting to let the team know I was leaving, I was shocked to see the stunned looks on their faces. A couple of them cried which I was absolutely not prepared for. I'm not trying to toot my own horn, I'm just trying to say I guess I was doing something right to elicit that kind of reaction.

My bosses knew about the problems I had with a few employees taking too many liberties working at home. Other department managers had the same problem with some of their staff, this was not unique to my team. The company didn't have any kind of spyware installed on employee computers to monitor activity, and it's very easy to manipulate teams to make it look like you're at your desk when you aren't. I'm opposed to that kind of monitoring anyway. All of my employees were salaried, so there were no cases to be made for cheating on a time card. Also, the company did not issue VOIP phones to remote workers. I had a company paid cell phone, but my reports were expected to forward their desk phone to their personal cell phone on their home days. For these reasons and a few others, HR would never approve the write ups I wanted to do. I could only have phone calls followed up with e-mails.

I'd see a few urgent e-mails come in from a customer to someone that weren't getting answered. I'd poke them with a teams message and get no reply. So I'd call and could tell that they weren't at home by the background noises on the call. They'd apologize for not seeing the e-mail, power up their laptop, deal with it and disappear again. This was just a couple problem children btw, most of the team were professionals and doing what they were supposed to do. These few employees knew they had the upper hand and frankly took advantage of it. It's not what I would have done, but I can't blame them. I can just look back and whine to strangers on the internet about it.

My managers told me I should force these employees to come in to the office every day, but I refused to do that for a few reasons. First, this went against the company's official pandemic emergency social distancing policy. The hybrid schedules and desk assignments were set up so that the cubicles around you were empty on your in office days. Second, it was extremely hard to hire people during that time. Demand for workers in my field exploded once everyone started making money hand over fist when shipping rates skyrocketed. Forcing them to come in unfairly like that would have led them to quit, and there was no shortage of companies out there willing to snatch them up. Then their desks would fall on me and the rest of my already over-worked team.

Lastly, I was hybrid too. So I'm going to force someone to come in every day when I'm only there 2 or 3 days per week? For what? The solution proposed to me by management was that I should come in every day. Mind you this was in the alpha / delta days. I had a 2 year old and a severely asthmatic wife at home. I wasn't about to come in and sit next to someone I knew wasn't social distancing based on the phone interactions I mentioned above. Masking policies weren't enforced I believed in the science and took that sort of thing very seriously in those days.

Real talk: I did my best to take a hard look at my own strengths and weaknesses as a manager at that job. I wanted to learn from my mistakes and do my best to not repeat them in my new position. The new job is 100% in office, work from home is by exception only. I know this is not a popular opinion around these parts, but I prefer it this way. Our job is fast paced and customer facing, and I'm in the process of re-writing and re-training the team's entire workflow. All of this is easier to do when we're in the same physical space and can call quick, impromptu huddles. I can hear problems brewing on the floor and coach everyone on how to solve them then and there. We all worked remotely today due to a snow storm and there were no problems.

The challenges I have with my new team are different because, honestly, they're kind of a shitty team. My predecessor picked some real duds. I'm actively trying to manage 3 of them out for one reason or another (constant Friday/Monday flu, direct insubordination, refusal to complete assigned tasks, failure to meet deadlines, etc). So now I'm learning and growing in a different way. I'm forced to be more punitive and micro-managing than I want to be. I'm alienating the staff I don't want to lose trying to weed out the bad apples and trying to figure out how to keep them motivated. I also have a few recent new hires I like that I don't want to get the wrong impression, but I can't give anyone a reason to claim that I'm picking on them when that's absolutely what I'm doing. I'll take tips if you have any! (no /s)

Long term, I don't want to manage an operations team or have a ton of direct reports. I want to move into a product or commercial role and work on bigger picture stuff. But I have to prove myself in my current role first.