I agree... the number of people truly slacking off is vanishingly small.
And no, I can't tell if someone is "actually working" just by being in the office. I have no interest in standing behind them at their desk all day.
On the other hand, I had one case where someone on my team had like zero committed code in weeks, and was WFH'ing several days a week (pre-pandemic) as an arrangement he'd made with his previous manager. When we had "the talk" about his low performance, one of the things I asked him was to stop with the WFH except for emergencies. That did, in fact, help keep him more accountable for his time, and being physically present helped him interact with the rest of the team and spend time whiteboarding, etc. And performance overall improved.
Is there a lesson there to generalize? Maybe, not sure. It's all very context- and individual- dependent.
And no, I can't tell if someone is "actually working" just by being in the office. I have no interest in standing behind them at their desk all day.
On the other hand, I had one case where someone on my team had like zero committed code in weeks, and was WFH'ing several days a week (pre-pandemic) as an arrangement he'd made with his previous manager. When we had "the talk" about his low performance, one of the things I asked him was to stop with the WFH except for emergencies. That did, in fact, help keep him more accountable for his time, and being physically present helped him interact with the rest of the team and spend time whiteboarding, etc. And performance overall improved.
Is there a lesson there to generalize? Maybe, not sure. It's all very context- and individual- dependent.